Mademoiselle

by Rhonda K. Garelick

  18 Franco’s coup in Spain: Mussolini marched into Abyssinia in 1935, and Hitler invaded the Sudetenland in 1938, occupying the rest of Czechoslovakia in 1939. In 1936, General Franco’s coup established a military dictatorship in Spain. As Judt observes, “The mid-Thirties were also the nervously anticipated années creuses (Eugen Weber’s title); a shortfall of military recruits resulted from the trough in the birth rate in the years 1914–1918. Hence the sentiment, shared by military planners and pacifists alike, that France simply could not fight another war.” Judt, “France Without Glory.”

  19 The truth was far murkier: French historian René Rémond was the most famous of those to insist that France nearly entirely rejected fascism. His 1954 classic, The Right Wing in France from 1815 to de Gaulle, distinguishes between the many French right-wing leagues and what he sees as “true” fascists. “The “Vichyite right [was] by its very nature a minority,” he wrote. Rémond, The Right Wing in France from 1815 to de Gaulle, trans. James M. Laux (1954; repr., Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966), 327.

  20 preparing the way for Vichy: “In this key period in the history of French society … before Vichy and independent of any Hitlerian influence, political anti-Semitism had become visible.” Pierre Birnbaum, Un mythe politique: La “République juive” (Paris: Fayard, 1988), 328–29.

  21 French citizens accepted, even welcomed: Among the most groundbreaking studies of France’s version of fascism are Eugen Weber’s Varieties of Fascism (1964); Robert Soucy’s Fascism in France: Case of Maurice Barrès (1973) and Fascist Intellectual: Drieu La Rochelle (1979); Zeev Sternhell’s Neither Right nor Left (1983); and Jeffrey Mehlman’s Legacies of Anti-Semitism in France (1983). Robert Paxton, too, in The Anatomy of Fascism (2004), argues that France was far more Vichyist than resistant. Literary critics such as Alice Kaplan in her 1986 Reproductions of Banality began in the 1980s to draw attention to the importance of fascist French writers such as Robert Brasillach, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, and Charles Maurras.

  22 consisted, arguably, of sheer need: Historian Pascal Ory, a student of Rémond’s, said, “Every Frenchman who remained on territory occupied by the German army or that was under its control had to some degree ‘collaborated.’ ” Pascal Ory, Les Collaborateurs, 1940–1945 (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1976), 10.

  23 “French fascism had generic roots”: John F. Sweets, “Hold that Pendulum! Redefining Fascism, Collaborationism and Resistance in France,” French Historical Studies 15, no. 4 (Autumn 1988): 731–58.

  24 “magical formulas for reconciling”: See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1948; repr., New York: Harcourt, 1968), 89–120.

  25 The treatment would restore Europe: “France’s anti-Semitism was somehow deeper but more about xenophobia,” for Arendt.

  26 igniting France’s domestic fascism: It is crucial to acknowledge the many nuances involved in French right-wing politics of this era. Not all nationalists were inclined toward fascism. Not all who supported fascism supported Hitler’s monstrous activities. Even the distinction between “right” and “left,” furthermore, must remain approximate when we speak of these years, since the ostensible goals of Germany’s National Socialist Party started out appealing strongly to France’s own socialists. The fascist PPF (Parti populaire français), for example, was founded by Jacques Doriot in 1936, and by 1937 boasted a quarter of a million members. Those who remained supporters of the Nazis usually came to renounce their own socialism however, becoming, de facto, rightists. Many traditional Catholic right-wing supporters, moreover, deplored fascism. The complexity of distinguishing right from left has been admirably explored by Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell. See Sternhell, Neither Right nor Left, trans. David Maisel (1983; repr., Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995). In fact, according to Sternhell, France’s strong nonfascist right wing was largely responsible for preventing a total surrender to fascism. Sternhell, 118. See also Robert Soucy, Fascist Intellectual: Drieu La Rochelle (Berkeley: University of California Press 1979), 3.

  Moreover, although by the mid-1930s a significant number of Frenchmen openly supported fascism and belonged to one of the several active native leagues, not all right-wing partisans followed this path.

  27 “[It was] fundamentally nasty”: Judt, “France Without Glory.”

  28 horrifying wealthy conservatives: Tony Judt aptly termed Blum a “lightning rod for modern French anti-Semitism.” Tony Judt, The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 19. On February 13, 1936, shortly after the elections, Blum was dragged from a car and beaten almost to death by the Camelots du roi, a group of anti-Semites and royalists. The right-wing, largely pro-fascist Action française league was dissolved by the government following this incident. See Birnbaum, 316.

  29 “It is intolerable that our country”: Daudet, l’Action Française, March 9, 1926, and Jean Louis Legrand in Le Défi, March 20, 1938, quoted in Birnbaum, 243.

  30 “I am afraid only of the Jews”: Haedrich, 119.

  31 “myth becomes blood”: Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, Le Mythe nazi (Paris: Editions de l’Aube), 61.

  32 way to limit their influence: See Romy Golan, “Ecole française vs. Ecole de Paris,” Artists Under Vichy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 85. Even Léon Blum became the target of this xenophobia. Blum was born French to French parents and grandparents. Birnbaum recounts that in June 1936 a rumor began circulating that he had been born in Bessarabia with the original name Karfunkelstein. Within two days the Action française, delighted, repeated the story. As late as 1959 the mistake was printed in the Petit Larousse Illustré in a biography entry on Blum, and had to be withdrawn “under the threat of legal action.” Birnbaum, 139ff.

  33 measures specifically restricting Jews: These new measures included quotas, civil restrictions, and the requirement to present identity papers upon demand. See Elizabeth Ezra for more on French immigration policies between the wars. “In 1931 the French government reversed its more open immigration laws, drastically curtailing immigration and expatriating many already in France. From 1921 to 1931 the immigrant population rose from 1.5 million to roughly 2.9 million; between 1931 and 1936, it decreased to 2.4 million.” Elizabeth Ezra, The Colonial Unconscious: Race and Culture in Interwar France (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), 144. See also Golan, 87ff.

  34 entire Parisian staff: About the 1934 riots, The New York Times had reported that Chanel “particularly deplored [them]” since they disturbed the wealthy American women who “had come with the evident intention of placing substantial orders, especially welcome after the long dry spell in the dressmaking world.” May Birkhead, “American Women Dare Paris Riots,” The New York Times, February 25, 1934.

  35 the form of weekly salaries: See “Marseilles Strikers Win,” The New York Times, June 25, 1936.

  36 “Consent to negotiations?”: Quoted in Charles-Roux, 520–23.

  37 “I detest giving in”: Delay, 178.

  38 adopted a ruling-class mentality: Charles-Roux, 523ff.

  39 other strikers around the country: Workers were emboldened by the terms of France’s new Matignon Agreements, which granted a forty-hour week and paid vacations.

  40 “With the same instinct”: “Chanel Offers Her Shop to Workers,” The New York Times, June 19, 1936; see also Emannuel Berl, “La Chair et le sang: Lettre à un jeune ouvrier,” Marianne, June 24, 1936, 3.

  41 “You believe this was a matter”: Quoted in Charles-Roux, 523.

  42 ties to the Third Reich: See chapter 4 for Dmitri’s relationship to this group, and chapter 8 for more on the Duke of Westminster’s politics in the 1930s and beyond.

  43 “She did not mind dropping”: See Hal Vaughan, Sleeping with the Enemy (New York: Knopf, 2011). According to Vaughan (as well as Edmonde Charles-Roux) Chanel—always deeply attracted to nobility and wealth—had had a flirtation with Edward when they first met
, which was just prior to her meeting the Duke of Westminster. See also Chazot, Chazot Jacques, 77.

  44 world-rocking scandal of 1936: In 1936, several months before Edward stepped down, Chanel hosted a dinner at the Ritz for Churchill, during which she and Winston and Jean Cocteau discussed the looming crisis of Edward’s marriage. Vaughan, 98.

  45 return to the British throne: Declassified British intelligence files have proved that these negotiations took place. Rob Evans and Dave Hencke, “Hitler Saw Duke of Windsor as ‘No Enemy,’ ” The Guardian, January 25, 2003. According to the files, Hitler felt that the duke was the only Englishman with whom he could negotiate an armistice.

  46 make common cause with Vichy: In France, the most anti-German members of the right wing were also those most susceptible to the same racially based arguments of the Nazis.

  Robert Brasillach explains clearly the typical French fascist turn toward Germany: “I was not a Germanophile before the war, nor even at the beginning of the politics of collaboration; I was simply looking for the interests of reason. Now, things have changed. It seems to me that I have entered into a liaison with the German genius, and I will never forget it. Whether we like it or not, we have cohabited. Thoughtful Frenchmen during these years have more or less gone to bed with Germany, not without quarrels, and the memory will remain sweet to them.” Brasillach, “Journal d’un homme occupé,” in Une Génération dans l’orage: Mémoires (Paris: Plon, 1968), 487, entry dated January 1944. Quoted in Frese Witt, 154n36., trans. Frese Witt. Also in “Lettre à quelques jeunes gens,” in Brasillach, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 12 (Paris: Club de l’Honnête Homme, 1963), 612, dated February 19, 1944.

  47 slid gradually into outright support: Robert Soucy explains that French nationalists sought to “emulate” the new Germany of the Third Reich. “In this way,” he writes, “France would also become strong, compelling Germany to respect her.” See Soucy, Fascism in France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 18ff. Here he is paraphrasing the argument made by Philippe Barrès explaining his decision to join France’s Faisceau, the first Fascist party, established by Georges Valois. Pascal Ory in Les Collaborateurs explains this most clearly in his early section about the years leading up to the war. He refers to the “slide” of the “nationalists and Germanophobes” into becoming “sincere admirers of international fascism, even ‘brown’ fascism.” Ory, 21. “Was the French fascist … supposed to embrace the German invaders in the name of international fascism … or to cling determinedly to a nationalist ideology for which Germany was the traditional arch-enemy?” asks Erin Carlston in Thinking Fascism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998), 27.

  48 Les Six, who often worked: The term “reactionary modernism” belongs to historian Jeffrey Herf. See Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). As art historian Mark Antliff observes: “Fascists, though opposed to enlightenment ideals … were eager to absorb aspects of modernism (and modernist aesthetics) that could be reconfigured within their antirational concept of national identity.” Antliff, “Fascism, Modernism, and Modernity,” Art Bulletin 84, no. 1 (March 2002): 148–69.

  49 Francis Poulenc, and Darius Milhaud: Jane Fulcher explains how the Jewish-born Milhaud reconciled his ethnicity with his extreme nationalism: “Milhaud considered himself to be a thoroughly assimilated Frenchman, but at the same time a Jew, from Provence, and thus of Mediterranean culture. He soon developed an abiding passion for ancient Greek civilization and myth; as with Freud before him, it was a neutral cultural ground shared by both gentiles and Jews. Thus, in a sense … the passion for the classical and for ancient history was a viable path toward a kind of desired cultural assimilation.” Jane Fulcher, “The Preparation for Vichy: Anti-Semitism in French Musical Culture Between the Two World Wars,” The Musical Quarterly, Autumn 1995, 470.

  50 “purity” in French culture: As Jane Fulcher observes: “Cocteau savvily promoted Les Six, attempting to associate their style with the dominant politicized cultural values. [He] presented Les Six as the modern incarnation of the French tradition … [seeking] to update or to ‘re-invent’ French nationalism.”

  51 friendships within Hitler’s inner circle: A Paris police report (number 09641) from February 3, 1945: “Jean Cocteau: collaborator and admirer of Germans, was producing propaganda.”

  52 from a German governess: Sharan Newman, The Real History Behind the Da Vinci Code (New York: Berkley Trade, 2005), 24.

  53 entertained Joseph Goebbels: Although in his autobiography he vigorously denied having supported the Reich, Lifar’s name became synonymous with “traitor” in postwar France. Lifar, Mémoires d’Icare (Monaco: Editions Sauret, 1993). Lifar’s thick police file in the archives of the Paris police proves that he was under surveillance for his suspicious activities as early as 1937, concluding with “it is definitive then that the presence of Serge Lifar is of no value in our country.”

  54 register with the SS: Sachs fled France eventually and died during an air raid in Hamburg.

  55 “She had confidence”: Personal conversation with author, March 2011.

  56 Morand’s strong racist beliefs: Morand was especially drawn to the writings of Count Arthur de Gobineau, author of the 1855 “Essay on the Inequality of Races,” which established the theory of a three-race hierarchy, in which White Europeans (especially Aryans) occupy the first, superior position, followed by Asians, and then, trailing far behind, the “Black race.” Gobineau’s influence is apparent in Morand’s 1929 account of his diplomatic mission to Haiti, Caribbean Winter, for example, as well as in novels such as the 1928 Black Magic. See Marc Dambre, “Paul Morand: The Paradoxes of Revision,” SubStance 32, no. 3 (2003): 43–54; Morand, Hiver Caraïbe (Paris: Flammarion, 1929); and Morand, Black Magic, trans. Hamish Miles (New York: Viking Press, 1929).

  57 could turn overtly murderous: He was a “militant anti-Semite,” in the words of historian Pierre Birnbaum, 155.

  58 “moral rehabilitation of the West”: Morand’s editorial appeared in the first issue of 1933, a weekly journal edited by Henri Massis, a founder of Action française. “De l’air! De l’air!” 1933, October 1933, quoted in Renée Winegarten, “Who Was Paul Morand?” New Criterion, November 6, 1987, 73.

  59 “we want clean corpses”: See Winegarten, 73. Although Morand had distinguished himself as a journalist and novelist, he was thrice denied entry to the Académie française (1936, 1941, and 1958), before finally being admitted in 1968, probably because of his suspicious political activities.

  60 description that chillingly conflates: Morand, L’Allure de Chanel, 8.

  61 how alluring fascism proved to be: In February 1933, writing in one of the right-wing newspapers he owned, L’Ami du Peuple, Coty had expressed his great enthusiasm for Hitler, then newly elected chancellor of Germany: “For years, I have predicted that the day would come … when patriotic Germany would acquire the ineffaceable right to the gratitude of the world by extirpating from the planet [Communist and Jewish] men … of prey.” François Coty, L’Ami du Peuple, February 7, 1933, quoted in Robert Soucy, “French Press Reactions to Hitler’s First Two Years in Power,” Contemporary European History 7, no. 1 (March 1998): 21–38.

  62 fascism’s condemnation of capitalism: One of the texts that highly influenced Mussolini is Georges Sorel’s 1910 Reflections on Violence, which lauds Marx and Lenin. Susanne Baackmann and David Craven have written about the subtly pro-business slant of certain fascist supporters: “Richard Evans and [Robert] Paxton … have shown a related phenomenon. Despite the anti-modernization and anti-capitalist rhetoric of every fascist movement, something else obtained historically speaking, since ‘whenever fascist parties acquired power […] they did nothing to carry out these anti-capitalist threats.’ (Robert Paxton, Anatomy of Fascism [New York: Knopf, 2004], 10.) To the contrary, a decisive moment both for the German National Socialists (with its ‘Night of the Long Knives’ in 1934
) and the Italian Fascists (with its ‘March on Rome’ in 1922) entailed the purging of precisely those radical members of their respective movements who were most implacable in their opposition to capital or to any fascist business alliances with the traditional elites.” Susanne Baackmann and David Craven, “An Introduction to Modernism—Fascism—Postmodernism,” Modernism/modernity 15, no. 1 (January 2008): 1–8.

  63 Reich-controlled France of the future: “Although a fascist lifestyle meant rejection of consumerism with its cult of personal comfort and happiness, fascist aesthetics were steeped in consumer culture.” Thomas T. Saunders, “A ‘New Man’: Fascism, Cinema and Image Creation,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 12, no. 2 (Winter 1998): 227–46. Lutz Koepnick makes a similar point—that the Third Reich, contrary to its ostensible doctrine, held out a promise of commodity consumption. See Lutz Koepnick, “Fascist Aesthetics Revisited,” Modernism/modernity 6, no. 1 (January 1999): 51–73, 52.

  64 “The Nazi myth”: Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, 54.

  65 “massings of groups of people”: Susan Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism,” The New York Review of Books, February 6, 1975, republished in Under the Sign of Saturn (New York: Picador, 2002), 73–108.

  66 a way to transcend the masses: Alice Kaplan brilliantly describes this paradox: “The bizarre combination of populism and elitism in fascism: a man rejoices as he disappears into a crowd, deems himself uniquely privileged for so doing. He is taking the crowd within him, absorbing its powers, just as he is rejecting, violently, the societal outcasts that allow him to define a privileged crowd in the first place.” Kaplan, Reproductions of Banality, 6. In an essay on what he calls “ur-fascism” (which include Hitler’s and Mussolini’s versions as well as latter-day descendants), Umberto Eco succinctly explains the charm of this paradox: “Ur-fascism cannot do without preaching a ‘popular elitism.’ Every individual belongs to the best people in the world, party members are the best citizens, and every citizen can (or ought to) become a party member.” Eco, “Ur-fascism,” in Five Moral Pieces, trans. Alistair McEwan (New York: Harcourt, 2001), 65–88, originally published in The New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995.