B006NTJT4U EBOK

by Jackson, Julian

  Vichy approved such contacts. In the first flush of enthusiasm of 1940, Vichy had encouraged a purge of political undesirables, exhorting prefects not to be satisfied with ‘demonstrations of loyalty’ and to undertake ‘the minutest enquiries’ about the beliefs of local figures in influential positions.83 By January 1941, however, this zeal had passed. Prefects were told that it was not their job to try and establish a ‘new moral order’ or exact ‘revenge for the events of 1936’. The aim was now stabilization.84 In the summer of 1940, instituteurs had been viewed with suspicion by the regime; by the beginning of 1942 they were being courted for the local support they could mobilize.85 The regime was now reluctant to antagonize opinion gratuitously since food shortages already caused enough problems. A bust of Pétain by the sculptor François Congé was supposed to replace busts of Marianne in town halls, but this was not strictly enforced: in the Paris Hôtel de Ville the two busts coexisted.86 Similarly prefects ordered unsuitable street names—Jaurès, Barbusse, Guesde, Proudhon—to be replaced, but they did not insist too officiously, and frequently the old signs were not removed.87

  The Church: ‘Loyalty without Enthralment’

  One institution on which prefects could count for support was the Church, which remained a pillar of the regime until the end.88 Pétain himself had never been devout. He had married a divorcee in a civil ceremony in 1920, which caused Catholics some embarrassment, until the marriage was solemnized by the Church at a secret ceremony in 1941. But Pétain was happy to embrace the Church as a bastion of social order whose objectives dovetailed with the National Revolution. Church leaders initially confined themselves to guarded support for the new regime on the principle of respect for established authority. But in the autumn of 1940, when the government’s political orientation became clearer, the Church succumbed totally to the cult of the providential leader. The tone was set by Cardinal Gerlier, Archbishop of Lyons, welcoming Pétain to the]city in November 1940 with the words: ‘Pétain is France, and France, today, is Pétain.’

  Prelates were present on most official occasions and bishops were frequent guests at Pétain’s table. Cardinal Suhard of Paris was named a member of the Conseil national. Clerics were to be found in ten departmental committees of the Legion; and 200 others were in leadership positions at the level of commune and canton (forty-five of these in the very Catholic Lozère).89 In July 1941 the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops (ACA) of the Free Zone (followed in the North in September) declared officially that ‘we venerate the Head of State’ and called for ‘complete and sincere loyalty, without enthralment, to the established order’. In practice the qualification ‘without enthralment’ did not prevent delirious effusions of devotion to Pétain from individual prelates. Many went beyond the formula ‘established order’ and described the government as ‘legitimate’.90

  The reasons for the Church’s enthusiasm are obvious. Vichy’s themes of contrition, sacrifice, and suffering resonated with Catholics. ‘Work, family, fatherland: these words are ours’, declared Gerlier. Not since the 1870s had the Church seen a greater opportunity to advance its interests. Few clerics might have gone as far as the Bishop of Dax who declared that the ‘cursed year for us was not 1940, that of our external defeat, but 1936, that of our internal defeat’,91 but most were ready to welcome Pétain as a saviour. Despite the condemnation of Action française in 1926, and the fact that 70 per cent of French bishops had been appointed since that date, it became clear how skin-deep the Church’s acceptance of Republicanism had been in many cases. Mgr. Araquy, archdeacon of Cahors, declared in the cathedral on 14 July 1941 that ‘many intelligent Frenchmen have never celebrated 14 July with much enthusiasm’.92

  Some Church leaders showed more caution, and in general their adulation became less effusive after 1941. The more reserved prelates included Archbishops Gerlier of Lyons (despite his notorious remark about Pétain being France) and Saliège of Toulouse. Saliège’s views were so notorious that de Gaulle addressed a personal message to him in May 1942. Among the more loyalist leaders was Cardinal Suhard of Paris who wrote to Pétain in June 1943: ‘More than ever France has need of you … of a voice which gives leadership to follow.’93 Despite these nuances, the hierarchy as a whole remained loyal until the end although tensions arose sporadically on specific issues. The Church was vigilant about defending the independence of its youth movements. There was conflict in the summer of 1942 when five leading prelates, including Gerlier and Saliège, publicly criticized the deportation of the Jews. But they had made their peace with Vichy by the start of 1943.

  Support for Vichy did not mean that the Church lent its support to collaboration, apart from a few striking exceptions. The Bishop of Arras, Dutoit, publicly supported Montoire. The German war against the Soviet Union was enthusiastically supported by Cardinal Baudrillart, rector of the Catholic Institute of Paris, who was on the governing committee of Chateaubriant’s Collaboration group. Probably senile (he died in 1942 aged 83), Baudrillart had become unhinged by anti-communism. He described the LVF as the ‘crusaders of the twentieth century. May their arms be blessed! The tomb of Christ shall be delivered.’ No collaborationist cleric was more colourful that Mgr. Mayol de Lupé— another collaborator inspired by the sight of blond youths in uniform—who had himself appointed chaplain to the LVF. His bravery in the field, at the age of 69, won him the Iron Cross. He would end Sunday Mass with the cry ‘Heil Hitler!’94

  These were extreme and unusual cases. On the other hand it could not be said that the Church offered an anti-German lead. Cardinal Suhard was obsequious to Abetz, who felt he could be counted on; he had himself represented at a reception at the German Institute in honour of Goering;95 and he gave absolution at a Mass in August 1942 for LVF volunteers who had fallen in battle. There was certainly no such treatment for the Communist hostages shot by the Germans. In general the Church’s reluctance to break with Vichy prevented it from distancing itself firmly from the occupier.

  The Church, of course, consisted of more than its bishops, but before 1943 most priests do not seem to have dissented from the official line. The Catholic Action Organization (ACJF) took the toughest stance on protecting the independence of the youth movements. The Catholic trade unionists (CFTC) were unhappy about the Labour Charter whose abolition of trade-union pluralism included them, and they were divided about whether they should participate in the institutions set up by the Charter.96 But the greatest source of Catholic dissent towards Vichy came from intellectuals in the religious orders like the Dominican Father Jean Maydieu and the Jesuits Gaston Fessard, Father Pierre Chaillet, and Stanislas Fumet: it was from these circles that Catholic resistance was to develop.

  To what extent did the Church’s support for the regime reflect the opinion of ordinary Catholics? The Occupation came when the Church was becoming deeply concerned by the dechristianization of French society, but in fact in the short term its influence was increasing. Everywhere the number of children in Catholic primary and secondary education increased, in some départements by more than 10 per cent.97 This may have had practical as much as religious causes, but there are other signs during the Occupation of an increase in popular religiosity. Many Catholics retreated from the difficulties of daily existence into a more intense spiritual life. A recent study of religious practice in Occupied Paris reveals a world of active Catholic citizenship in which the calendar of feast days, pilgrimages, holy days of obligation, and parish works looms more largely than the more well-known chronology of national events. The author argues that ordinary Catholics ‘by remaining loyal to the structures of parish life, succeeded in protecting themselves and their families … from the violent ideological onslaught of Nazi and collaborationist propaganda’.98 But, even if this is true, it begs the question how Catholics responded to Vichy: did the regime’s quasi-religious rhetoric of repentance, contrition, and resurrection win it the political support of ordinary Catholics?

  One particularly intense moment of religious fervour, whic
h the regime tried to harness to political ends, was the pilgrimage organized by the Catholic Rover Scouts to the basilica of Le Puy-en-Velay, famous for its Black Virgin. Thousands of Catholic members of the Catholic Action youth groups descended on Le Puy from all over France on 15 August 1942, Assumption Day. Twenty-five statues of the Virgin from different French churches were ceremoniously transported to Puy. Among them was the much-venerated Virgin from Boulogne cathedral which was smuggled across the demarcation line in a vegetable truck. Cardinal Gerlier and the Papal Nuncio presided over the Puy ceremonies in the presence of nine bishops. Pétain sent a message, and the occasion was attended by representatives of the Legion, the local prefect, and the head of Vichy’s Youth Secretariat, Georges Lamirand. This was the apotheosis of the relationship between Vichy and the Catholic Church.99

  In the wake of the Puy celebrations came the movement known as the Grand Retour (The Great Return), an upsurge of Catholic fervour whose significance is harder to fathom. After the Puy pilgrimage, the statue of Notre-Dame de Boulogne was taken to Lourdes where it arrived in September, having attracted huge crowds on its journey. This success led to the idea of allowing more people to see the statue before its return to Boulogne. Three replicas of the statue were constructed, and the four statues then embarked on a progress across the country, each taking a different route. The return of the statues to Boulogne was also to be a return of the people of France to God.

  Originally the four statues were intended to reach Boulogne by the end of 1944, but the Liberation slowed their progress. The Grand Retour was not over until August 1948. The statues passed through some 16,000 parishes, exciting scenes of enthusiasm which amazed many priests who had often been sceptical about the project. The largest gathering occurred at the Colombes Stadium in Paris in October 1945 where some 100,000 people went to see the statue. This was one of the climaxes of popular Catholicism in twentieth-century France. It led the Bishop of Arras—before the Liberation—to see another sign of the miraculous powers of Pétain. After the Liberation, some Communist municipalities tried to block the progress of the Grand Retour through their localities. But the phenomenon, which straddled the period from the Occupation to the Liberation, defies simple political categorization. The prayers which people deposited by the statues reflected the preoccupations of the moment. At first, they prayed for prisoner of war relatives to return safely; later they prayed that their villages be spared from destruction at the Liberation. In one locality, 122 Resistance fighters called upon the Virgin to protect their region. The Grand Retour was too vast to be contained by the mobilization of religion for political ends which had occurred at Puy in 1942. The Catholic Church supported Vichy until the end; the same was not true of most Catholics.100

  12

  Public Opinion, Vichy, and the Germans

  In the first weeks after the defeat, people responded to the Germans with relief, surprise, and curiosity: relief that the fighting was over; surprise at the restrained behaviour of the Germans; curiosity to see these godlike creatures who had triumphed so decisively. On the heels of the German troops soup kitchens arrived to provide relief to the population. Posters underscored the message: ‘Abandoned populations—put your trust in the German soldier.’ The word of the moment to describe the conduct of the Germans was ‘correct’.1 In the first weeks in Paris, they carried cameras as often as guns.2 They all seemed young, bronzed, and handsome. One observer wondered if they were a ‘beauty chorus reserved for triumphal entries’.3

  The terror that the Germans had aroused in anticipation rendered the first encounters strangely reassuring. Women refugees caught up in the Exodus, who had smeared themselves with mustard to burn German soldiers who might rape them, were pleasantly surprised to meet disciplined German soldiers more helpful to them than the haggard French soldiers they had come across as they fled south. Viewed at close quarters the Germans turned out to be human. One witness remembered her amusement, as a little girl, at seeing these odd creatures clumsily trying to eat seafood for the first time. Such incidents made the Germans seem almost vulnerable.4 Léon Werth remarked in his memoir of the Exodus: ‘It was the time when they were “correct” which preceded the time when they gave us lessons in manners.’5 This period of correctness was only a moment in the history of the Occupation, but it left traces even after the ‘lessons in manners’ had begun.

  It was part of a conscious German strategy to erase the memory of alleged German atrocities in 1914 which lived on in folk memory. Simone de Beauvoir in 1940 encountered people in the west with stories of children who had had their hands cut off. In 1940 the Germans seized any Allied military documents relating to atrocities in 1914, and destroyed any monuments which commemorated them.6

  From the beginning, however, German ‘correctness’ was ambiguous. As Werth wrote: ‘We are “kept”. The German soldiers distribute tins of bully beef and sardines … chocolate and sweets. But it is all made in France. It all comes from Rouen or Orléans, it has all been looted.’7 The German Ernst Jünger’s diary of the invasion reads at times like a gastronomic tour washed down by good Champagne and Burgundy, but these delicacies did not come from nowhere. At Sedan in May 1940 Jünger watched German soldiers lowering bottles of Burgundy down from the upper windows of houses: ‘I snatched one in mid-air like a fish snapping at bait: a Châteauneuf-du-Pape 1937’ (revealingly, this passage was cut from the diary when it was published in 1942 and only appeared in print for the first time after the war).8 But since most of the French population of the north-east had fled before the Germans arrived, they were not present to witness scenes of looting. Even Werth noted that the Germans in his area were only pillaging abandoned property,9 and whatever the superficiality of German correctness, the invaders’ behaviour in France was very different from what it had been in Poland or was later to be in the Soviet Union. In comparative terms, at least, correctness was not entirely a myth. In the north-east, however, this cut no ice, not only because of the memories of 1914–18, but also because of atrocities carried out by the Germans during the 1940 invasion: 98 civilians had been massacred at Aubigny-en-Artois (22 May), 124 at Oignies and Courrières (28 May).10

  Elsewhere, in the summer of 1940, most people were too traumatized to think beyond the problem of getting home, tracing relatives who had disappeared in the Exodus, worrying about sons or husbands who had fallen into German hands. Society was in a state of total fragmentation, people experiencing, in one prefect’s words, ‘intellectual and moral anaesthesia’.11 What mattered was that the fighting was over. People knew what the Armistice had ended; they did not yet know what it had begun. In areas evacuated by the Germans because they lay outside the Occupied Zone, the Armistice almost seemed like a victory. When the Germans left Saint-Étienne on 6 July, the tricolour was raised and people gathered to sing the Marseillaise.12

  Even François Mauriac, a writer later unambiguously associated with resistance, was initially unsure how to react. On 3 July 1940, he wrote an enthusiastic article in Le Figaro about Pétain’s broadcast of 25 June; and on 15 July, another one venting his fury at Mers el Kébir. But a few days later he wrote to a friend: ‘we are so tossed about that our feelings change from day to day. Undoubtedly the wise course would be to remain silent until our destiny takes shape.’ In September, Guéhenno found him ‘in despair’, repeating ‘what to do, what to do?’ To another correspondent he wrote: ‘I think that despite everything it is necessary to support Pétain in spite of what he is obliged to do.’13

  Gide’s 1940 Journal reveals similar fluctuations of mood:

  [14 June] Pétain’s speech [on the ‘esprit de jouissance’] is simply admirable.

  [24 June] Yesterday we heard with stupor Pétain’s new speech … Was it really Pétain who pronounced it? Freely? … How can one talk of France as ‘intact’ after handing over half the country to the enemy … How can one not give wholehearted support for the speech of General de Gaulle?

  [5 September] To treat with yesterday’s enemy is
not cowardice, it is wisdom; the acceptance of the inevitable … What is the point in battering oneself against the bars of one’s cage? To suffer less from the smallness of the gaol, one should stay in the centre of it. I feel myself to have unlimited possibilities of acceptance.

  By the start of 1941, Gide was so confused that he felt that the ‘swings of my thoughts’ could only be adequately expressed by a dialogue presenting two sets of opposing views.14 As for Gide’s friend Roger Martin du Gard, in July 1940 he felt like a cork floating on the filthiest water.15

  Public Opinion: From Disenchantment to Opposition

  After the initial shock of defeat, however, and despite the propaganda surrounding Mers el Kébir, opinion had by the autumn become anti-German and pro-British. It remained so throughout the Occupation. This is confirmed by every source which monitored public opinion, whether in the Lot (south-west) or the Var (south-east), whether in Clermont-Ferrand (Auvergne) or in the north-east.16 Anti-German feeling was initially most intense in the Forbidden Zone, but the rest of the Occupied Zone soon followed suit. In the Unoccupied Zone, the expulsion of the Lorrainers in November caused a shock to public opinion, leading the prefect of Hérault to comment: ‘the principle of collaboration has regressed with a large part of opinion. The feeling of revolt against the aggressors only continues to grow.’ ‘Almost unanimously favourable to Great Britain’ was how the pro-Vichy prefect of Ariège described his département in February 1941.17