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Apr. 4th, 2004 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chickenfeetRobert Gildea Marianne in Chains
No, its not a Victorian porno, its a study of life in three French departments (Loire Inferieur, Loire et Indre and Loire et Maine) during the Occupation. Now I have to confess to a long running irritation with the portrayal of the French as any sort of significant factor in the defeat of Nazi Germany so I was intrigued by the idea of a history of occupied France that was written by someone with no obvious axe to grind.
Gildea does a pretty good job of drawing out the different threads in the often complex relationships between occupiers, officials, notable, Vichy, the church and ordinary citizens. What is clear is that most people found coping strategies somewhere in the murky area between collaboration and resistance and that overt acts of violent resistance were rare and almost entirely confined to the Communists. Local notable and officials for the most part successfully navigated their way through the transitions from Third republic to Vichy to Fourth Republic with their positions more or less intact.
One area of active, even enthusiastic, collaboration though was the de-Judaisation of the economy and civil society and, ultimately the deportation of Jews to the camps. Officials, police and ordinary citizens exhibited a degree of zeal and co-operation with the Germans in this area that contrasts sharply with the passive resistance to the conscription of workers for the German war effort. Significantly, even after the liberation little effort was made to restore property and businesses to their proper owners or, more likely, their heirs.
The role of the Catholic Church is interesting. The main problem the church hierarchy seems to have had with the Germans was that they were inconveniently protestant. Certainly the church did nothing to protest the deportations of Jews or Communists but went to some lengths to defend its own privileges.
No, its not a Victorian porno, its a study of life in three French departments (Loire Inferieur, Loire et Indre and Loire et Maine) during the Occupation. Now I have to confess to a long running irritation with the portrayal of the French as any sort of significant factor in the defeat of Nazi Germany so I was intrigued by the idea of a history of occupied France that was written by someone with no obvious axe to grind.
Gildea does a pretty good job of drawing out the different threads in the often complex relationships between occupiers, officials, notable, Vichy, the church and ordinary citizens. What is clear is that most people found coping strategies somewhere in the murky area between collaboration and resistance and that overt acts of violent resistance were rare and almost entirely confined to the Communists. Local notable and officials for the most part successfully navigated their way through the transitions from Third republic to Vichy to Fourth Republic with their positions more or less intact.
One area of active, even enthusiastic, collaboration though was the de-Judaisation of the economy and civil society and, ultimately the deportation of Jews to the camps. Officials, police and ordinary citizens exhibited a degree of zeal and co-operation with the Germans in this area that contrasts sharply with the passive resistance to the conscription of workers for the German war effort. Significantly, even after the liberation little effort was made to restore property and businesses to their proper owners or, more likely, their heirs.
The role of the Catholic Church is interesting. The main problem the church hierarchy seems to have had with the Germans was that they were inconveniently protestant. Certainly the church did nothing to protest the deportations of Jews or Communists but went to some lengths to defend its own privileges.
On a complete tangent
Date: 2004-04-04 08:56 am (UTC)It's all well and good having good taste in opera in common, but what impresses me more for no good reason whatsoever is that you're a Lancashire lad in Toronto, just like my partner is. Except he doesn't like opera.
Re: On a complete tangent
Date: 2004-04-04 09:01 am (UTC)Re: On a complete tangent
Date: 2004-04-04 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-04 09:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-04 10:19 am (UTC)