In December 1940, the censors instructed papers to hammer their messages home: ‘it is through obstinate repetition that propaganda for the New Order will bear fruit’.29 In fact, obstinate repetition led to boredom. By the start of 1941, the press of the Southern Zone was losing readers, especially to Swiss newspapers. If people read the press at all, it was to discover precious information about rationing. When Marion took over, he tried to operate a more flexible system, encouraging newspapers to present the news in the way best suited to their readers. After Pétain’s ‘evil wind’ speech, some papers were encouraged to stress the speech’s authoritarian aspects, others its social content (the attack on the trusts).30 But Marion’s attempt to allow more leeway foundered since he could not stop ministers intervening on their own account to censor material: censorship created its own momentum.31
How did the press of the Free Zone respond to these conditions? There were 330 titles, including nine dailies and thirty weeklies which had left Paris, and an extensive regional press. Some publications like Gringoire or Action française identified entirely with Vichy’s core philosophy, and if they criticized the regime, it was for not going far enough.32 Maurras, however, had to go through contortions to reconcile his support for Vichy with his antipathy for Germany. He avoided saying anything positive about the Germans, and evaded the issue of collaboration, as emerges from the following dialogue from his book, La France seule:
‘Are you a partisan of what the Marshal calls “collaboration”?’
‘I don’t have to be a partisan of it.’
‘So you are against?’
‘Not against it either.’
‘Neutral?’
‘Not neutral either.’
‘You accept it then?’
‘I have neither to accept it nor to oppose it’.
The moral was to have complete confidence in Pétain.33
For those papers out of sympathy with the regime, like the Catholic La Croix and the liberal conservative Le Figaro, or leftish regional papers, like the Depêche de Toulouse or Le Progrès de Lyon, editorial compromises were unavoidable. Dissent could only be expressed in oblique ways. Le Figaro published the Jewish Statute without commentary, which was as close as one could come to disapproval; Le Croix indicated when editorials had been imposed upon it by signing them ‘NC’ (‘Note Communiqué’). But newspapers always ran the risk of suspension. This happened to Le Figaro, between 6 January and 14 January 1942, for being too favourable to the Red Army, and to Le Progrès de Lyon in June 1942 because it refused to accompany a report of the British bombing raid on Boulogne-Billancourt with headlines proclaiming ‘The English and the Communists agree to assassinate France’.
After the Germans occupied the South in November 1942 some papers suspended publication: Le Figaro and Le Progrès de Lyon on 12 November, and Le Temps on 29 November (too late to prevent its prohibition at the Liberation).34 But Pierre Limagne of La Croix justified the continued appearance of his paper on the grounds that ‘the press has had to stoop so low under Pétain that Hitler can hardly be worse’; in these circumstances it was better to ‘hold the fort’.35Paris-Soir, which tried to suspend publication on 11 November, was forced to continue printing, or see its staff deported to Germany. It fought back by giving headline billing to minor events and consigning pro-German news to the inside pages. Eventually it ceased publication in May 1943. The more flexible policy which Marion had favoured was implemented in January 1943 when the remaining papers signed an agreement with Vichy allowing them to present news as they wished providing they respected the general government line. This system of self-censorship did nothing to staunch the haemorrhaging readership.36
Newsreel propaganda in the two main zones was so different that it might have been describing two separate countries.37 In the Occupied Zone, cinemas had to show German newsreels. At first these were very crude: the speaker denouncing Mers el Kébir had a German accent. So the Germans set up an agency producing French versions of their newsreels, under the name Actualités mondiales. In the Unoccupied Zone, Vichy forced the three existing newsreel companies into a single organization, France-Actualités. The German Actualités mondiales devoted much time to anti-British propaganda and news about the war. In the Vichy newsreels, however, the outside world was largely absent: the only other countries which seemed to exist were Spain and Switzerland. Seeing these newsreels today, one might not realize a European war was taking place. They depicted a peaceful and rural France, offering extensive coverage of Pétain’s provincial visits, and reports on French traditions and French craftsmen; there was also a lot about the Empire. The newsreels of the two zones overlapped only in ignoring the presence of the Germans—apart from items in Actualités mondiales about German soldiers helping French women and children.
Vichy was not happy that its newsreels were seen by only half the country. After prolonged negotiations, a single company was set up in August 1942 with exclusive rights to edit and distribute all newsreels in France. The board of the company was composed of two Germans and three Frenchmen, with a 60 per cent French stake, but since its French president, Henri Clerc, was committed to collaboration, the newsreels conformed more to Germany’s vision than Vichy’s.
In radio propaganda, no such amalgamation occurred. The Germans set up their own radio station in Paris, entirely staffed and run by the French. Its transmitters covered most of the country. Vichy had no control over the content, although the Germans did allow two daily broadcasts of Vichy news bulletins. Vichy National Radio, with transmitters in some southern cities, had a much less extensive reach. The style of the two radios could not have been more different. Radio Paris, run by a younger team, had the pick of French singers and musicians, and developed innovative styles of broadcasting. One of its innovations was the Compass card, inviting listeners to write in with their views which were then read out over the air. This programme proved so popular that it was broadcast twice weekly at peak time. In comparison, Vichy radio was stuffy and unimaginative, and listeners found it boring.38
The political tone of the radios was also different. Radio Paris contained subtle propaganda for the new Europe, virulent anti-Semitism, irreverent mockery of Vichy conservatism, and, after June 1941, anti-Bolshevism. On the day the Germans invaded Russia, Radio Paris applauded this ‘liberating’ conflict to rid Europe of ‘the Bolshevik nightmare which has haunted it for twenty years’. Radio Vichy merely announced an event ‘of great importance’ whose outcome was ‘unpredictable’. Vichy reported the course of the war on the eastern front in a detached way, as if describing an event of distant history. Apart from this characteristic evasion of reality, Vichy radio lacked a clear propaganda line. A plethora of Vichy organizations were allotted their own radio time—the Legion, with five minutes daily, the Youth Commissariat with a slot called Radio jeunesse, the Family Secretariat—and this led Darlan to complain in March 1942 that this cacophony was putting listeners off.39
Intermediaries
Despite these internal contradictions, Vichy did create a distinctive political style. When Jean Guéhenno arrived from Paris for his first visit to the Unoccupied Zone in June 1942, he encountered ‘a strange country, a sort of principality where everyone seems to be in uniform: from children of six regimented into “Youth Groups” up to war veterans wearing francisques or the insignia of the Legion. Where is France in all this?’40 Vichy’s obsession with choreographed public festivals, ritual, and pageantry was about trying to develop a new political culture. History teaching in schools was reformed in order to play down the significance of the Revolution.41 Although 14 July remained an official public holiday, its significance was reinterpreted. It was no longer a day of celebration, commemorating the Fall of the Bastille, but, as Pétain said in 1941, a day of ‘meditation’ on France’s misfortunes—the war dead, the prisoners in Germany, the ruined cities—and on her hopes for recovery. There was to be no ‘street agitation’. Even this was too much for Maurras or the fascists of Je suis p
artout who wanted 14 July erased from the official calendar.
Having downplayed 14 July, Vichy developed its own calendar of commemoration. The three most important events took place in May. Since this was also traditionally the season of rural rituals of rebirth and fertility, it fitted well with Vichy’s folkloric and regionalist rhetoric. The first of May, which before 1940 had been a working-class holiday, now became the festival of work—no longer, in Pétain’s words, a ‘symbol of division and hatred’ but one of ‘union and friendship’. The festival of Joan of Arc, on the first Sunday after 8 May, had been celebrated since Joan’s canonization in 1920, but its importance was upgraded by Vichy: it was a chance to recall that France’s hereditary enemy had not changed over six hundred years. Finally, Mother’s Day, the last Sunday in May, became the occasion of a massive propaganda campaign. These fêtes celebrated the guiding principles of the regime: Work, Family, Patrie.42
A central role in Vichy’s public ceremonial was played by the Legion. The legionnaires, attired in their berets, are one of the most familiar sights in photographs of the period. The anniversary celebrations of the Legion’s foundation on 28–31 August, when the legionnaires solemnly renewed their oath, was another key date in Vichy’s calendar. The legionnaires were supposed to sell the message of the National Revolution, but their missionary zeal was counterproductive. Local Legion leaders caused irritation by acting as petty vigilantes: rebuking prefects because portraits of the Marshal were not prominently displayed or denouncing schoolteachers considered to be lukewarm about the National Revolution. Some prefects submitted lists of proposed local appointments to the Legion in order to avoid problems later.43 The Legion’s officiousness was particularly oppressive in small communities. In Jean Guéhenno’s village, the Legion president was the pharmacist ‘avenging over the last two years the fact that for the rest of his life he has exercised no influence at all’. The vice-president was the local hairdresser who contrived to be busy whenever Guéhenno presented himself for a haircut: ‘At last I understood. He wants to cut off my head, but not to cut my hair. He is counting on all the credit he will derive from this when he retails it to the new notabilities of the region.’44
Whatever its shortcomings, the Legion was effective enough to sabotage other organizations created to propagate the gospel of the National Revolution. The Comité du rassemblement national was stillborn because the Legion would not co-operate with it.45 The Amicale de France had more success, at least on paper. Its ‘Amis du Maréchal’ claimed to have bases in forty-five cities of the Free Zone, and 600,000 subscribers to its Bulletin. Unlike the Legion, it was allowed in the Occupied Zone. In the two Norman departments of the Eure and Seine-Inférieure, there were allegedly between 11,000 and 15,000 members at the end of 1942. But these claims seem optimistic, and the paucity of references to the Amicale in local studies suggests that it had a negligible impact.46 The most sustained attempt to create an effective propaganda organization was Marion’s network of regional propaganda delegates. In the department of the Bouches du Rhône alone (excluding Marseilles), ninety people worked for Marion’s propaganda services. In the summer of 1941, they circulated 60,000 tracts, and 7,000 posters reproducing Pétain’s speech of 12 August; between June 1941 and February 1942, they organized 350 speeches or lectures.47 But this intense activity encountered local hostility from the Legion, and most of it fell on deaf ears.48
Aware that its message was not getting through, in the autumn of 1941 the regime created the commissaires du pouvoir. These were a corps of officials, to be recruited outside the administration, who would travel the country inspecting abuses of state power, and offering redress against them. In the end, however, the commissaires all came from the administration, except for one trade unionist, whose appointment shocked the Legion because he had been a Freemason. The commissaires turned out to be so ineffectual that it was not even worth abolishing them.49 These endless propaganda initiatives meant that even in many towns the regime could be represented by numerous different spokesmen: the local Legion leader, a propaganda delegate, a delegate of the Youth Secretariat, and so on.50 This did not make for coherence.
One organization which the regime might have used to harness support was La Rocque’s PSF which was the only party to survive the disintegration of 1940 with its structure more or less intact. In August 1940, La Rocque had changed the name of the party to the Progrès social français to signify that it was now confining itself to charitable and social activities. Given that Vichy’s rhetoric was similar to that of the PSF in the 1930s—the motto ‘Work, Family, Patrie’ had originally been La Rocque’s—it would have been natural to try and make use of La Rocque’s cadres. La Rocque tried on various occasions to offer his services, but he was not even able to secure an interview with Pétain who did not want to share his glory with anyone else. There was much suspicion of La Rocque who had always clung to his independence. La Rocque viewed the Legion as partly directed against him, but he did not stop PSF members joining it. Six departmental heads of the Legion were from the PSF.
La Rocque finally got an interview with Pétain in September 1941 at the time when Pucheu was nursing the idea of building a single party. He wanted to persuade La Rocque to merge the PSF with the Legion. Although La Rocque would not agree to this, he did agree to co-operate with the Legion, probably as a way of fending off the dissolution of the PSF. He was also given an advisory position in Pétain’s cabinet. But La Rocque’s tactical rapprochement with Vichy soon ended since it became clear that he had no intention of allowing the PSF to be absorbed by the regime.51
In addition to the Legion, Vichy also relied upon a number of parapolitical organizations to sell its message. The most important of these was the Secours national, a charitable organization founded in 1914 to aid victims of the war, and headed throughout the Occupation by Robert Garric. Partially funded by the State, the Secours national also raised money by selling portraits of Pétain. It called itself the Entre-Aide d’Hiver du Maréchal (The Marshal’s Winter Relief). This was Vichy’s attempt to exploit the mood of charity and solidarity which had been aroused by the plight of the refugees in 1940. The same function was performed by the ubiquitous Prisoner of War Aid Committees which existed in every département.
This propaganda was particularly directed at children who were urged to ‘adopt’ a prisoner of war. They were also exhorted to alleviate the food crisis by foraging for acorns and chestnuts; or to join in rooting out the Colorado beetles (doryphores) which had recently arrived from America. (This turned against its instigators when the term doryphore became one of the slang terms for German.) In the autumn of 1940 teachers were told to organize their pupils to collect wild fruit. This was done, but the food was allowed to rot instead of being distributed. In the next year, enthusiasm for the campaign had diminished. As so often, Vichy squandered its initial capital of goodwill—in this case through bureaucratic inefficiency.52
Repression and Administration
Propaganda was accompanied by repression. Vichy France was a highly policed society: one of its legacies to contemporary France was the introduction of identity cards. On average about 350,000 letters were opened each week. In December 1943 alone about 2.5 million letters, 1.8 million telegrams, and 21,000 telephone conversations were intercepted.53 This is why we are so well informed about public opinion under the Occupation.
Before Pétain’s two-day visit to Marseilles in December 1940, the police carried out 20,000 preventive arrests of possible troublemakers, who were parked in prisons or in boats, barracks, and cinemas which had been commissioned for the purpose. Before Pétain arrived in Toulouse, in June 1942, prostitutes were rounded up and sent to the camp of Récébedou. This is the side of Pétain’s visits not revealed by the newsreels of cheering crowds.54 In January 1943, Marseilles was the site of another major police operation when the Germans insisted on clearing—and then destroying—the Old Port. Some 9,000 police were brought in to supplement the local forces, and in one
week 400,000 identities were checked, and almost 6,000 individuals apprehended. This was the largest police operation in French history.55
Between April and July 1941, there were eleven major laws or decrees reorganizing the police. The result was to create a national police in France for the first time: in towns with a population above 10,000, the policing was taken out of municipal control and put under the control of the State (prefects).56 Another law created the GMR (Groupes mobiles de réserve), a new force specializing in crowd control (the ancestor of today’s CRS). The Brigades spéciales (BS) which had been reactivated in August 1941 to track Communists were supplemented in 1942 by the creation of a second division (BS2) which specialized in hunting down immigrant resisters.57
In addition to this reinforcement of the traditional police, a number of parallel police forces were established. The first of these were Colonel Georges Groussard’s Groupes de protection designed as a sort of praetorian guard for Pétain. But at the end of 1940 they were disbanded on the instructions of the Germans because of their involvement in the plot against Laval. After the regime’s repressive turn in the summer of 1941, Pucheu created three new police services in October: the Anti-Communist Police (SPAC), the Jewish Police (PQJ), and the Secret Societies (i.e. Freemasons) Police (SSS). These were staffed by professional anti-Semites or collaborationist activists who made up in zeal what they lacked in professionalism—another indication of the porousness of the frontier between Vichy and collaborationism.
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