Defying Vichy (eBook)

2

National Renewal

Following the full cessation of hostilities on 25 June 1940, the newspaper L’Avenir reported that the ‘region lived through none of the horrors of war except for the sight of the exodus of the evacuated populations’. The Journal de Bergerac noted, ‘Happily, the enemy is not coming, and only the supply of milk and vegetables to our town suffers.’ Families wanted for food, warmth and safety. They also wanted the 1.8 million men back from the prisoner-of-war camps established in Germany and eastern France. This had left a hole in the workforce, and in the hearts and minds of the population.i

Local administration was, from July 1940, restructured and personnel replaced. Departmental préfets (prefects) were reminded that they were expected to replace mayors of municipalities with whichever member of the conseil municipal they saw fit. On 14 January 1941, the préfet of the Dordogne, Maurice Labarthe, received a telegram from Pierre Pucheu, secretaire d’État à l’intérieur (Secretary of State for the Interior), that all municipalities opposed to the Révolution nationale must be toppled immediately. This strengthening of Vichy power at a local administrative level was further extended in September 1941 when René Rivière replaced Maurice Labarthe as the new préfet of the Dordogne.

Restrictions began almost immediately and much of the region’s raw materials were directed towards the Reich. An order from the prefect outlawed the production and sale of bread less than 2.5kg in weight, so as to avoid wastage through staleness. The sale of flour was prohibited, as was the production and sale of patisserie. A diet of three days without meat was ordered, as was the careful use of tripe and offal. Prudence and moderation were strongly recommended in using spices or comestibles. ‘The prefect calls for discipline by the people of the department, in yielding to the measures described which have as an aim, if scrupulously respected, the avoidance of harsher restrictions in the near future.’1

Pétain’s new state was born as a ‘National Revolution’, though Pétain disliked the term, since it reminded him of communist anarchism. He preferred ‘renewal’ as his primary aim was to rediscover the ‘eternal’ France soiled by so-called excesses, ‘decadence’ and moral deterioration. The new state was to be post-monarchist and authoritarian – not quite fascist, but with Pétain as a God-like figure, returning to the people their forgotten traditionalist morality. Inward-looking and intensely anti-British (the eternal enemy responsible for so many of the ills that had beset the French), Pétain played the public on the idea of finding and removing those responsible for the defeat of June 1940.2 Painting himself as a ‘providential saviour’, his programme was drawn around several loose guidelines: a loyal application of the armistice through a policy of collaboration in order to lead France into a preferential position after German victory; a transformation of the country under the National Revolution; and finally a systematic call to national unity which included the designation of internal enemies and the repression of all those who did not agree.3 Through a disciplined following of the leader, reactionary values could be cultivated and the exclusion of ‘undesirables’ such as Jews and Freemasons (Francs-maçons), deemed guilty for the decadence of the previous regime, could be achieved.

The propaganda machine ensured that the Vichy government was recognised as the legal heart of government. Many felt a sense of relief, if not elation. Those with families were comfortable in the knowledge that the Vichy government was committed to pumping money into an education system that would throw off the shackles of secularism and embrace the Catholic ideals of prayer and worship. An insistence on clean living and family ideals was welcome. Family and purity were central to the Vichy ideals in a revolutionised France. Pétain ensured that the republican motto of ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’ was replaced by ‘Travail, famille, patrie’. In agricultural areas such as the Dordogne Pétain succeeded in highlighting the ideals of family, patriotism and hard work in alignment with the cult of personality so vital in the establishment of an anti-democratic regime. His image appeared everywhere: in public places and in classrooms, where pupils were to sing the new anthem, ‘Maréchal, nous voilà’ in place of the ‘Marseillaise’. The role of the young person in the new État Français was emphasised and celebrated. As well as being messianic, redemption focused and paternalistic, ideology behind the ‘National Revolution’ emphasised the need to train and manage the country’s youth.

An army-influenced youth organisation, Les Chantiers de la Jeunesse, was set up in 1940 in order to avoid draft-age unemployed youths becoming restless. Located near big towns and cities, the camps were based in forests, and the following year it became compulsory, akin to national service. Young men were obligated to attend camps involving lectures and activities to promote healthy minds and bodies. Well-equipped and -provisioned, they became easy targets for Maquis raids in the years to come, and around 20 per cent of their members quit to join the Maquis. Girls could voluntarily attend camps too, but their activities were based largely around craftwork and skills for home-makers. Traditional values were emphasised, as was a return ‘to the earth’ and the removal of the anti-France, starting with the Jews, the communists and the Francs-maçons. During a speech on 25 June 1940, Pétain declared that ‘our defeat arose from our slackening’, and his followers were struck by his message of redemption from hard work.

Initiatives began to ‘rebrand’ France and remove her republican past. The numerous public areas called Place de la République were renamed in honour of the new leader. Teachers were instructed to extol the virtues of the new state, and were warned that a lack of action in promoting the new ideas would be deemed an act of protest against the state. While these new policies were very difficult to enforce, teachers felt exposed in front of their charges, who could so easily report back to their families. The new État Français placed huge importance on the Catholic Church, on France’s army, on her public figures and her elite. From the summer of 1940 it began its policy of exclusion against the Jews, communists and Freemasons. The regime did all it could to remove those who resisted the national revolution. Work began to root out those who did not fit the profile of a ‘Vichy Frenchman’, initially using humiliation and mockery, later through material persecution and imprisonment. Romany gypsies were shut up like livestock and communists were hunted with increased regularity.

Detention camps were not new to France: even under the Third Republic camps had been set up, such as those at Le Vernet and Gurs. Originally built to house dissident Spanish Republicans, they had also been used to house illegal aliens of all nationalities and, from 1939, camps such as those at Château du Sablou had been used to detain militant communists. Conditions were not good and gradually got worse. With labour widely available, the government voted in a law enabling the detention of foreign men between the ages of 18 and 45 as long as there was an excess of labour in the economy.

In all, 15,154 naturalisation papers issued since citizenship had been simplified were returned and of these 6,307 were Jews. Charles Maurras applied the pejorative term métèques to his own ideas of ‘anti-France’: Protestants, Masons and Jews. This theory worked well for readers of Action Française and government leaders, except that Protestants were too influential and ingrained to remove, so their place in the triumvirate of enemies was taken by communists. Pressure was exerted on those associated with the Third Republic. Secret societies were outlawed in mid-August and public officials were made to swear that they were no longer members. Freemasons’ behind-closed-door meetings of politicians and businessmen in towns throughout France were, for Vichy, ‘a kind of clandestine shadow government’.4 The Masons’ lodges of Bergerac, Périgueux and Sarlat were shut down and property was auctioned off. Masonic symbols were removed from buildings and ironwork. In Périgueux the rue des Francs-maçons became the rue de la Bienfaisance. With a long-term rivalry between the lodges and the Catholic Church that went back several hundred years, French Masons were generally anti-religion, which meant they were also anti-monarchy, and anti-right wing. Good Catholics, and thus good Frenchmen, were prohibited from joining. The attack on the Masons was not due to any pressure from the Germans and probably did little other than to dissuade many middling Frenchmen to back the regime.

The Communists

Though only 14 years old when power passed to Pétain, Lucien Cournil was already politically aware. His father, a glass-maker in the Brardville glass factory in Saint-Lazare, just a few miles west of Terrasson, was an...