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Endings and Beginnings (1918–1930)

Barbara Will

in Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ, and the Vichy Dilemma

This introductory chapter discusses the beginnings of the friendship between two intellectuals, Gertrude Stein and Bernard Faÿ, which served as the context for reconciling Stein's “progressive” ... More

This introductory chapter discusses the beginnings of the friendship between two intellectuals, Gertrude Stein and Bernard Faÿ, which served as the context for reconciling Stein's “progressive” experimental writing and her later “reactionary” politics. Both Stein and Faÿ would find that they had many things in common, yet perhaps the most profound—if not the most troubling—aspect of this friendship was their mutual admiration of Philippe Pétain, whose politics seemed counter to Stein's progressive, avant-garde aesthetics and beliefs. Further complicating the issue wasthe troubled backdrop of the interwar years—wherein the political upheavals following the First World War had given way to jadedness for the current political systems, as well as the formation of new hybrid political movements—with an uneasy Europe struggling to come to terms with the United States' siren's call for “modernization.”Less

Faÿ’s War: Winners and Losers (1940–1946)

Barbara Will

in Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ, and the Vichy Dilemma

This chapter discusses Bernard Faÿ's role in wartime France. At the onset of World War II Faÿ worked under Pétain at the core of the Vichy regime, as the appointed head of the Bibliothèque Nationale ... More

This chapter discusses Bernard Faÿ's role in wartime France. At the onset of World War II Faÿ worked under Pétain at the core of the Vichy regime, as the appointed head of the Bibliothèque Nationale (BN), France's national library. Faÿ was a monarchist and a passionate patriot—a strong believer in “France for the French,” which in his viewpoint consisted of a nation purged of democrats, communists, and Freemasons. Faÿ would eventually be tried as a Nazi collaborator during the war, despite Stein's efforts to come to his defense—yet their respective fortunes after the war would conclude an ever-changing power dynamic between them—from an initial period that saw Faÿ eager to win Stein's favor and ascend into her inner circle of disciples, to an equalization of their friendship based on mutual attraction and ambition, to a strange new negotiation steeped in the dilemmas and dangers of Vichy.Less

A Socialist in Vichy

Emanuel Rota

in A Pact with Vichy: Angelo Tasca from Italian Socialism to French Collaboration

On the night of September 3, 1944, Angelo Tasca was arrested by French soldiers and sent to the military prison in Clermont-Ferrand. While in jail, Tasca changed his public persona to distance ... More

On the night of September 3, 1944, Angelo Tasca was arrested by French soldiers and sent to the military prison in Clermont-Ferrand. While in jail, Tasca changed his public persona to distance himself from the Vichy regime under Marshal Philippe Pétain. His alternative assessment of the situation in France after it was invaded by Germany was extremely complicated. He believed that French nationalism should unite right and left in order to end the social and political conflicts in France. He expected Italy to be of servitude to Germany if the latter won the war. Once he realized that the war was over for the French, Tasca hoped that a revolt would defeat Germany and fascism. His full support for the creation of the Vichy regime enabled him to play an active role in Vichy politics beginning in the summer of 1940. From the second half of 1942 until his arrest in 1944, Tasca served as director of the Vichy’s research bureau under the secretary general for propaganda.Less

Understanding Vichy's Policy

in The Hunt for Nazi Spies: Fighting Espionage in Vichy France

This chapter examines the counterespionage policy of Vichy France. It analyzes the attitude of Philippe Pétain towards the anti-German activities of its secret services based on the memoirs of secret ... More

This chapter examines the counterespionage policy of Vichy France. It analyzes the attitude of Philippe Pétain towards the anti-German activities of its secret services based on the memoirs of secret service veterans. The memoirs depict the Vichy government as ambivalent toward the secret service and describe constant struggle between the two. The analysis also reveals that the low-level daily functioning of these services was autonomous and their anti-German activity was not known at governmental level.Less

Vichy-Sur-Léman

Barbara Will

in Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ, and the Vichy Dilemma

This concluding chapter discusses the aftermath of World War II and Gertrude Stein's subsequent death from uterine cancer. Shocked by the loss, Bernard Faÿ wondered how he would soldier on. ... More

This concluding chapter discusses the aftermath of World War II and Gertrude Stein's subsequent death from uterine cancer. Shocked by the loss, Bernard Faÿ wondered how he would soldier on. Struggling within his postwar “prisons”—literal and psychological, moral and spiritual—Faÿ attributed any moments of serenity to his remembered influence of Gertrude Stein. Yet the separate and mutual collaboration of each with Philippe Pétain's Vichy regime had ended up weakening this bond. Their story illustrates how deeply fascist and profascist politics divided and severed human beings from one another, creating invidious, dehumanizing racial, national, and religious distinctions that would eventually result in the “death world” of World War II. The story of Stein and Faÿ's friendship is a compelling personal story, but it also captures in microcosm the shape of this era.Less

War on the Colonial Borderland, 1919–1926

Sasha D. Pack

in The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Modern Hispano-African Borderland

The Rif War (1921–1926) is typically understood as an anticolonial struggle against Spanish imperialism, but this chapter places the conflict in the broader regional context of the aftermath of World ... More

The Rif War (1921–1926) is typically understood as an anticolonial struggle against Spanish imperialism, but this chapter places the conflict in the broader regional context of the aftermath of World War I. Angered by Spain’s pro-German activities during the war, the French Foreign Ministry began a campaign to expel the Spanish from Morocco. Sensing danger, Madrid ordered hasty military action into the Rif Mountains, a provocation that enabled the enterprising nobleman Abd el-Krim to build a Riffian independence army. Abetted by support from contraband networks and benign neglect of French and British patrols, Abd el-Krim built a republic while the Spanish experienced political turmoil culminating in a military coup d’état by Miguel Primo de Rivera. The situation changed only after the French began to see their own positions threatened, at which point Spain and France gradually came together to defeat the Riffian uprising by 1926.Less

The American Battle Monuments Commission and World War II, 1939–1945

Thomas H. Conner

in War and Remembrance: The Story of the American Battle Monuments Commission

This chapter discusses the measures taken in order to secure the safety of the American memorials and the employees who tended them during the Second World War. Concern over the spreading war and ... More

This chapter discusses the measures taken in order to secure the safety of the American memorials and the employees who tended them during the Second World War. Concern over the spreading war and growing hardship culminated in the evacuation of all the American employees of the commission, along with their dependents, from France and Belgium in 1941. Surprisingly, the monuments only suffered minor damage during the war. This chapter also highlights the efforts of army captain Charles G. Holle and Colonel T. Bentley Mott, the last two Americans to lead the Paris office of the ABMC before the United States entered the war, to preserve the memorial sites. Mott actually returned to wartime France in 1942 to supervise such efforts directly, and ultimately spent months in German custody. When the Allied armies liberated the ABMC sites in 1944, General Eisenhower sent an extremely joyful cable to Pershing announcing the good condition of the cemeteries and monuments.Less

The Italian Armistice Commission with France (CIAF)

Emanuele Sica

in Mussolini's Army in the French Riviera: Italy's Occupation of France

This chapter focuses on the role of the Commissione di Armistizio con la Francia (Italian Armistice Commission with France), or CIAF, in the Italian occupation of France. The CIAF, created after the ... More

This chapter focuses on the role of the Commissione di Armistizio con la Francia (Italian Armistice Commission with France), or CIAF, in the Italian occupation of France. The CIAF, created after the Armistice of Villa Incisa, was officially invested with the task of ensuring that the clauses of the Franco-Italian armistice were not infringed by the new French state, the Vichy regime led by Marshal Philippe Pétain. More important, its officials in France proclaimed themselves as paladins of the Italian community of the French Riviera. Their welfare campaign, far from being moved on humanitarian grounds, was promoted to impinge on French internal affairs with the avowed secret task of spearheading Italy’s future annexation of the French Riviera. This chapter examines the CIAF’s activities in the Côte d’Azur during the period 1940–1942 and the “Battle for Food” that was waged not only in occupied France but also all across Europe and even worldwide.Less