B006NTJT4U EBOK

by Jackson, Julian

  As far as the future peace treaty was concerned, Hitler had debts to pay to Italy, and these were likely to be at France’s expense. Laval made the mistake of misreading Abetz’s intentions and overestimating his influence. As Philippe Burrin observes, collaboration was based on a double manipulation: that perpetrated on the French by Abetz who was really seeking ‘France as a satellite not a partner’; that perpetrated on Abetz by Hitler who allowed Abetz to believe he wanted France as a satellite whereas in reality he intended to crush her.63

  How could Vichy have been so credulous about Germany? A partial explanation can be found if one moves from the high politics of collaboration, which was a dialogue of the deaf, to collaboration as a daily process of negotiation. State collaboration was the story of a French government desperately seeking a response from a German government which was usually not interested. But it is not true that there was nothing the Germans wanted from the French. On the contrary, they embarked on a systematic milking of the French economy. Having abandoned a policy of outright requisition in the autumn of 1940, the Germans engaged the French in complex economic negotiations. These had the consequence of accustoming high-level French officials to the idea of doing business with the Germans. Administrative, economic, and political collaboration followed different rhythms. Montoire did not help the French negotiators on the Armistice Commission, but Abetz’s hostile reaction to the sacking of Laval did not disrupt Franco-German negotiations which were taking place in Paris to work out how much influence Germany should be allowed over civil service appointments in the Occupied Zone.64

  Vichy tried to monitor, and control, economic negotiations between industrialists and the Germans. For this reason it set up, in February 1941, the General Delegation for Franco-German Economic Affairs (DGREFA), under Jacques Barnaud, to co-ordinate all Franco-German economic negotiations. The French aimed to link economic negotiations, where the Germans wanted something, to political negotiations, where the French wanted something. The highly sensitive case of the aircraft industry showed, however, that the Germans refused to connect politics and economics in this way. Here the initiative for collaboration came from the Germans who wanted French factories (in both zones) to produce planes for them. In September 1940 Vichy agreed to allow French factories to produce military aircraft for Germany, except fighter planes which might be used offensively against Britain. The Germans asked the French to produce German models as well. In return Vichy asked for concessions on the demarcation line and the release of prisoners, but with no success. It was Flandin who in January 1941 abandoned this bargaining position and let the negotiations proceed nonetheless. An agreement was finally signed in July 1941. In return for producing planes for Germany, the French were also authorized to produce aircraft for themselves (something previously forbidden by the Armistice). The proportion of German to French planes would be approximately 2:1. The French were to produce 2,275 for Germany (including 1,480 German models) and 1,101 for France.

  By November 1942, when the Germans occupied the whole country, they had still received only about half of the planes due. The shortfall, which also affected the planes for France, was due not to any French resistance, but to shortages of raw materials and to the difficulty of adjusting to German models. Nonetheless, the total contribution of the French aircraft industry to Germany was not insignificant: 27 per cent of Germany’s transport planes in 1942, 42 per cent in 1943, and 49 per cent in 1944 had come from France. Planes produced in France supplied Rommel’s African army in 1942 and German troops at Stalingrad in 1943.

  If Vichy had not collaborated in this matter, the Germans would probably have dismantled French aviation factories and reassembled them in Germany. But there were more positive motives for co-operation. German orders kept the French aircraft industry going, allowed France to envisage building up an air force again, and provided employment to the aircraft workers who had been laid off after the Armistice. Their number had dropped from 250,000 in May 1940 to 40,000 in June; by 1942 it was back to 80,000; by 1944, 100,000.65 The aircraft industry embodied a paradox which applied to French industry as a whole: the Germans posed a threat to the French economy, but they also provided the only prospect of its recovery. Negotiations were therefore unavoidable. Even if political concessions were not forthcoming, the French were also interested in other concessions—for example, the provision of raw materials lacking in France or guarantees that some production would be reserved for the French market. If the Germans wanted the French to supply them with manufactures, they had to allow them raw materials in return.

  During all economic negotiations Vichy was vigilant about a possible penetration of German capital into France. At the Ministry of Finance, Maurice Couve de Murville was put in charge of monitoring this issue. In fact, this was one area where the Germans proved less predatory than expected. The one exception was the dye industry where the German chemical giant, IG Farben, backed by the German authorities, intended to restore the dominant position in the French market which it had lost after the First World War. An agreement signed in March 1941 compelled French manufacturers to join a new Franco-German mixed company, Francolor, where IG Farben held 51 per cent of the capital. The French government in return obtained some concessions: the president of the company would be French, and the agreement would not be taken as a prototype for other industries, as the Germans had originally wanted.66 Other examples of financial penetration occurred not as part of a general strategy, but in piecemeal fashion, and for specific reasons. In the cases of the Denoël and Sorlot publishing houses, and the Havas press agency, the motive was one of ideological control. In the case of the Galeries Lafayette department store and Calmann-Lévy publishing house, the Germans seized an opportunity presented by ‘Aryanization’. In the case of the Mumm champagne firm, the Germans recovered control of a firm which had been German-owned before 1914 and been taken over by France on the outbreak of war.

  The absence of a concerted German plan for financial penetration of the economy indicated how unimportant a place was ascribed to the French economy in the post-war New Order. In the immediate term, they could obtain all they wanted from France thanks to their massive purchasing power and to the mechanisms of economic control they forced the French to set up. The most important of these was OCPRI on which an MBF report in September 1940 commented: ‘a foundation has been laid on which French industrial production and distribution can be directed in a unified way under German control throughout the whole of France’.67

  A whole series of contracts were signed with French industry: the Kehrl Agreement in February 1941 for the purchase of French textiles, various contracts for the purchase of bauxite, the Grunberg Plan for the delivery of shoes.68 Invariably the terms were unfavourable to the French, but there was little choice. As Bouthillier told the government when recommending acceptance of the Kehrl Agreement: ‘If this operation is not accepted in an agreement, it will be imposed upon us.’69 In the case of some lost causes, Vichy did not exert itself to protect French industrial interests. This was true of the steel industry where the likelihood of losing Alsace-Lorraine permanently did not make it worth arguing too hard about a sector where German pre-eminence seemed assured.70 By the end of 1941 the Germans were taking 40 per cent of French bauxite, 55 per cent of aluminium, 90 per cent of cement, 50 per cent of wool, 60 per cent of champagne, and 45 per cent of shoes and leather products.71

  Even if economic negotiations were often disappointing to the French, the officials with whom they negotiated were more flexible than the higher political authorities. These were at least negotiations. Although unhappy about the terms of the textile agreement, the French negotiators found their opposite number, Hans Kehrl, encouraging in his views about the future of France’s textile industry in the new Europe. He was said to have shown ‘a spirit of comprehension … and a genuine desire for collaboration’.72 Summarizing economic collaboration at the end of 1941, one high-ranking official noted that, however tough Germany had been, she h
ad been less ‘eager than the Anglo-Saxon powers would have been in a similar situation to take commercial stakes’.73

  Overall, then, these contacts helped to fuel the expectations of technocrats in the Darlan administration that ultimately collaboration could be conducted on a rational basis: economic logic would prevail over political prejudice. They viewed economic collaboration as a step towards the construction of a new Europe in which France would play a major role. Lehideux nursed the idea of three great road systems linking Bordeaux and Berlin, Cherbourg and Basel, Marseilles and Hamburg. In France itself sixteen roads would converge on Paris through sixteen monumental ‘gates of the Marshal’.74 The irony was that this vision of France as a modern industrial nation corresponded less to German plans for France as a weak agricultural economy than did the vision of the more anti-German traditionalists around Pétain. In that sense at least, the traditionalists were more realistic than the technocrats. But when it came to fantasy politics neither could compete with the Paris collaborationists.

  9

  Collaborationism

  Fanatics, Criminals, and Adventurers

  Parisian collaborationism has fascinated film-makers and novelists. It is depicted as a world of louche marginality and decadence: fraternization with Germans over champagne in Maxims or the Tour d’Argent; glamorous first nights at the Opéra and galas at the German Embassy; job openings for informers, sadists, and black marketeers; opportunities for fanatics to indulge their hatred of Jews, Communists, Freemasons, or the British; the chance for failures to settle scores with rivals; or, finally, for those bored with existence, the excitement of transgressing conventional moral codes. In this light collaborationism becomes a series of individual stories of fanaticism, naivety, opportunism, and adventure.

  Naivety and adventure were certainly present in the case of Marc Augier, a former pacifist who ended up fighting for Germany on the eastern front. In the 1930s Augier had been a leader of the non-Catholic youth hostel movement, with links to the Popular Front, but like many pacifists he became increasingly anti-Communist. By defending ‘Europe’ in the French (Charlemagne) division of the Waffen-SS, he rediscovered the outdoor life and youthful camaraderie which he had celebrated while supporting the Popular Front: this was ‘collaborationism’ as youth-hostelling and male fraternity.1

  Fanaticism was present in the case of the historian Bernard Fäy, a professor at the Collège de France, who was made director of the Bibliothèque nationale, in place of Julien Cain, sacked because he was a Jew. Fäy, who ran a supposedly scholarly publication called Documents Maçonniques, was obsessed by Freemasonry; he even suspected Freemasons among the episcopate.2 Among those with scores to settle was the journalist Alain Laubreaux, a leading light of Je suis partout. During the Occupation he became the most powerful Parisian theatre critic, on one occasion lavishing praise on a play he had himself written under a pseudonym. But how does one characterize the strange journey of Maurice Sachs? Before the war he had been a minor literary figure, friendly with Gide, Cocteau, and others. After the defeat, he lived for a while with a German officer. He started playing the black market and also spent some time in a homosexual brothel. In the autumn of 1942 he went to Germany, ending up in Hamburg where he worked as a crane operator, before becoming a Gestapo informer.3

  The Occupation provided rich pickings for racketeers. The exorbitant occupation costs meant that there were German buyers disposing of sums too huge to spend legally. Equally there was no shortage of French sellers looking to sell above the official fixed price. These were perfect conditions for the emergence of a black market. Most German authorities in France set up purchasing services which operated on the black market, buying in France and reselling in Germany. The most important of these was the ‘Otto Bureau’, started by the Abwehr. By the spring of 1941 it employed 400 people, and had taken over rail-yards in the north of Paris from which it despatched its merchandise to Germany.

  This system required a swarm of French middlemen. The most flamboyantly successful were two Jewish immigrants, Joseph Joinovici and Mandel Szkolnikov. Joinovici, of Romanian origin, had arrived in France in 1921 and made a fortune in scrap metal before the war; Szkolnikov, of Russian origin, had arrived in 1933 and worked in the garment trade. On the eve of the war, he was under threat of expulsion for issuing false cheques. After the Germans’ arrival Szkolnikov’s rise was meteoric. He supplied the Kriegsmarine, the SS, and the Otto bureau, building up a fortune which allowed him to accumulate huge amounts of property. Joinovici’s success was on a less grand scale, but he built a large circle of contacts, among them the sinister Bonny-Lafont gang.

  Lafont, whose real name was Henri Chamberlin, had a long criminal record for robbery. In 1940 he offered his services to the Abwehr. His speciality was finding premises vacated by Jews who had fled south. Their contents would end up with the Otto Bureau. Lafont was also called upon to do police work for the Germans, and he recruited accomplices from acquaintances he had encountered in gaol. He became a captain in the SS in 1941, and in the next year he teamed up with Pierre Bonny, a former police inspector sacked for corruption in 1934. The success of their activities allowed Lafont to buy an hôtel particulier in the rue Lauriston. Here they hosted lavish receptions at which German officers could meet collaborationist press barons and French actresses procure German patrons. In 1943, the Germans clamped down on the black market because it was drying up materials necessary for the German war effort. But if there were fewer opportunities for profits, there were more for torture as the Bonny-Lafont gang helped the Germans to track down resisters. The rue Lauriston torture chambers became infamous.4

  Frères-Ennemis: Doriot and Déat

  Collaborationism was not only an accumulation of individual stories. It was also a political world setting itself up against Vichy, and offering a more radical vision of France’s future. One should not, however, exaggerate the dichotomy between Vichy and Paris. Vichy often practised discreetly what the collaborationists preached vociferously. Vichy ministers like Marion and Benoist-Méchin were totally committed to a collaborationist position; various collaborationist groups received intermittent Vichy subsidies. Nonetheless the language employed by the Paris collaborationists was different from that of Vichy.5 They talked more of Europe than France, viewing Hitler as a new Charlemagne reuniting Europe, or, after June 1941, as a holy crusader against Bolshevism. Where Vichy talked of national reconciliation, collaborationists preferred the language of denunciation. There was a newspaper, Au pilori, which existed just to denounce enemies of France—Communists, Freemasons, and above all, Jews.

  The collaborationist world was not homogeneous—it contained pacifists and fascists, Socialists and Catholics—and the choice of collaborationism was not predetermined. Some former members of the clandestine right-wing organization, the Cagoule, became collaborationists, some ended up at Vichy, others in London.6 Collaborationist politics was a vipers’ nest of hatreds, all the more intense because power was so remote. There was a constellation of tiny organizations, all aspiring to become France’s single fascist party. There were more candidates for this role in occupied Paris than there had been parties in the Third Republic. Some collaborationist groups, like Marcel Bucard’s Francistes, had existed before the war; others, like Robert Hersant’s Jeune Front, were new. Many groups had only the most notional existence. The Jeune Front’s only sign of activity was to break the windows of Jewish shops on the Champs-Élysées.

  Tiny organizations gave themselves grandiose names like the Ligue française d’épuration, d’entr’ aide sociale et de collaboration européenne founded by Pierre Costantini and four friends in September 1940. Costantini was violently anti-British—he put up posters announcing that he had declared war on Britain—and anti-Semitic. His newspaper L’Appel ran a series of articles in 1941 on the theme ‘Should the Jews be Exterminated?’ He ended his life in a mental asylum.7 More significant was Eugène Deloncle’s Revolutionary Social Movement (MSR) which possibly had as man
y as 20,000 members in 1941. These included Eugène Schueller, founder of the cosmetics firm L’Oréal. Deloncle had been a leading member of the Cagoule, and was unable to throw off his habits of terrorism and conspiracy. On the night of 2 Ocotober 1941, he was responsible for the bombing of several Paris synagogues; he was also strongly suspected of involvement in the assassination in July 1941 of Marx Dormoy, the Socialist who had helped to break the Cagoule during the Popular Front government. These activities alienated some of Deloncle’s followers and led to an internal coup against him from within the MSR in May 1942. By July 1942 he was plotting with the Abwehr, and possibly also with the Allies, against Hitler; in January 1944 he was shot by the Gestapo.8

  Among this plethora of groups, two stand out: Marcel Déat’s Rassemblement national populaire (RNP) and Jacques Doriot’s PPF. In September 1940 Déat took over the pre-war Radical newspaper, L’Œuvre, using it to attack Vichy’s halfhearted attitude to collaboration. In January 1941, he founded his own party, the RNP, which was an alliance between former neo-Socialists and Deloncle’s MSR. This curious cohabitation between the earnest, former Socialist intellectual and the inveterate right-wing conspirator was Déat’s attempt to build a movement transcending left and right, the embryo of a fascist single party. The RNP’s immediate objective was to bring Laval back to power, and Déat with him. Characteristically Deloncle wanted to achieve this by a march on Vichy (à la Mussolini).