[lit-ideas] Vichy France, Summer 1940
- From: "Lawrence Helm"<lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 23:39:32 +0000
I’m reading Vichy France, Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944 by Robert O.
Paxton, first written in 1972 and revised a bit in 2001.
Here are some samples of the soul-searching that went on in France about why
they lost (and perhaps deserved to lose) to Germany in 1940:
On page 22 of his chapter, "Prologue: Summer 1940," Paxton quotes Paul Valery
as writing ‘The war was lost during the peace.’
And "Andre Gide, who had taken up rereading Zola’s novel about the
Franco-Prussian war, La debacle, on June 26, filled his diary with reflections
on French decomposition,’ the ‘excessive freedom,’ the ‘sorry reign of
indulgence’ that was being brought to an end. ‘All my love for France could not
keep me from being aware of our country’s state of decay.’ ‘All my love for
France could not keep me from being aware of our country’s state of decay.’
Francois Mauriac bridled in the columns of Figaro at those who dared speak of
hope at such a time. France must recognize her humiliation and accept the
‘repose of the bottom of the abyss.’ The Germans deserved to win, wrote
Teilhard de Chardin on 3 August, for no matter how bad or mixed their spirit,
they had more spirit than the France which had been stuck in the old routines
since 1919."
"Each had his own diagnosis of the rot. Some looked to superficial signs, like
jazz, alcohol, Paris night life, short skirts, moral depravity among the young,
birth control. Enjoyment itself was blamed for softening the nation: the
‘spirit of facility,’ the ‘cult of ease.’ Intellectuals had mocked sacred
institutions: lean Blum had written a youthful work ridiculing marriage. Jean
Cocteau’s play Les parents terribles had undermined the authority of fathers.
Most of all, Andre Gide had opened the way to libertine self-fulfilment in
‘gratuitous acts.’ How it reveals the depth of the 1940 shock, therefore, to
find [Gide writing in his journal on 28 July 1940] ‘Indulgence, indulgences. .
. . That sort of puritan rigor by which the Protestants, those spoilsports,
often made themselves so hateful, those scruples of conscience, that integrity,
that unshakable punctuality, these are the things we have most lacked.
Softness, surrender, relaxation in grace and ease, so many charming qualities
that were to lead us, blindfolded to defeat.’
"The irony seemed strongest in that those very features which had made France
so delightful and artistically creative had ill fitted her for the new harsh
age. Paul Valery wrote in his notebooks some time in late June 1949, ‘The abuse
of things good in themselves has brought France to grief: among them, the
bounty of the soil, liberty of the spirit, insouciance of individual, all of
which degenerates into facility, negligence, improvisation. . . . We are
victims of what we are, and France, in particular, [is a victim] of her
advantages."
Comment:
Something we can see in the annals of war is that "the barbarians almost always
win" -- at least when they are fighting against a nation which has excised its
own barbarism. Or another way of putting it would be to say that the "most
barbarous wins." We see that in the period Paxton is writing about. The
Germans were the barbarians and France had become sophisticated, artistic and
weak – and victim "of her advantages." The intellectuals Paxton quotes realized
this. Interestingly they don’t claim their achievements made them too valuable,
too important, to lose to the Germans. Mauric may have been speaking for the
others when he said they deserved to lose. What a climate of opinion – I can
barely imagine – when the French intellectuals in 1940 wrote that France
deserved to lose to Nazi Germany.
And yet do we not have something like that going on in the U.S. today. Are
there not many people siding with the modern-day barbarians and saying America
deserves to lose? We haven’t the same sort of achievements France had, but we
are rich and becoming increasingly effete and perhaps more and more will argue
that we deserve to lose. The Islamists and Jihadists are perhaps more brutal,
more barbaric than the Nazis, but many here in the U.S. say we deserve to lose
to them. These defeatist writers condemn America in their writings and defend
the barbarian.
Fortunately for those of us who don’t believe we deserve to lose, we are not in
the same position militarily that France was in 1940. The modern day barbarians
don’t have a superior military force. They have great confidence in their
suicide bombers, but perhaps no more are signing up for suicide work than
signed up for Kamikaze trailing in Japan. However many there are, they don’t
compare to one of Heinz Guderian’s Panzer divisions.
Maybe we’ll do well enough against the current crop of barbarians, but maybe we
are like France in 1919. Maybe by the time the next crop comes along we shall
be like France in 1940.
Lawrence
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