Chris Millington
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719085505
- eISBN:
- 9781781702680
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719085505.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
The most up-to-date and comprehensive English-language study of its kind, From victory to Vichy explores the political mobilisation of the two largest French veterans’ associations during the ...
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The most up-to-date and comprehensive English-language study of its kind, From victory to Vichy explores the political mobilisation of the two largest French veterans’ associations during the interwar years, the Union fédérale (UF) and the Union nationale des combattants (UNC). Drawing on extensive research into the associations’ organisation, policies and tactics, this study argues that French veterans were more of a threat to democracy than previous scholarship has allowed. As France descended into crisis, the UF and the UNC sought to extend their influence into the non-veteran milieu through public demonstrations, propaganda campaigns and the foundation of auxiliary groups. Despite shifting policies and independent initiatives, by the end of the 1930s the UF and the UNC had come together in a campaign for authoritarian political reform, leaving them perfectly placed to become the ‘eyes and ears’ of Marshal Pétain’s Vichy regime.Less
The most up-to-date and comprehensive English-language study of its kind, From victory to Vichy explores the political mobilisation of the two largest French veterans’ associations during the interwar years, the Union fédérale (UF) and the Union nationale des combattants (UNC). Drawing on extensive research into the associations’ organisation, policies and tactics, this study argues that French veterans were more of a threat to democracy than previous scholarship has allowed. As France descended into crisis, the UF and the UNC sought to extend their influence into the non-veteran milieu through public demonstrations, propaganda campaigns and the foundation of auxiliary groups. Despite shifting policies and independent initiatives, by the end of the 1930s the UF and the UNC had come together in a campaign for authoritarian political reform, leaving them perfectly placed to become the ‘eyes and ears’ of Marshal Pétain’s Vichy regime.
Annick Ohayon
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199744664
- eISBN:
- 9780199932863
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199744664.003.0014
- Subject:
- Social Work, Social Policy
Annick Ohayon’s chapter examines in detail the lives of the psychoanalysts who formed the Société Psychanalytique de Paris, and the effect of the political events on them during the German occupation ...
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Annick Ohayon’s chapter examines in detail the lives of the psychoanalysts who formed the Société Psychanalytique de Paris, and the effect of the political events on them during the German occupation of France. Ohayon charts the political division within the group, showing the relationship between the psychoanalysts and the Vichy Regime depended upon the various attitudes of each analyst. Although some members of the group collaborated with the regime (such as René Laforgue and Georges Mauco), others were members of the Resistance (Sacha Nacht and Paul Schiff, who were both Jewish) or in exile (like Princess Marie Bonaparte). Despite this and the banning of Freud’s work, the majority continued in private practice without involvement in politics. Many also worked in public institutions under the Vichy regime, but Ohayon argues that this does not mean they should be understood as collaborators. In this politically polarized environment, the attitude of each analyst was strongly tied to his or her commitments as a citizen, rather than status as an analyst.Less
Annick Ohayon’s chapter examines in detail the lives of the psychoanalysts who formed the Société Psychanalytique de Paris, and the effect of the political events on them during the German occupation of France. Ohayon charts the political division within the group, showing the relationship between the psychoanalysts and the Vichy Regime depended upon the various attitudes of each analyst. Although some members of the group collaborated with the regime (such as René Laforgue and Georges Mauco), others were members of the Resistance (Sacha Nacht and Paul Schiff, who were both Jewish) or in exile (like Princess Marie Bonaparte). Despite this and the banning of Freud’s work, the majority continued in private practice without involvement in politics. Many also worked in public institutions under the Vichy regime, but Ohayon argues that this does not mean they should be understood as collaborators. In this politically polarized environment, the attitude of each analyst was strongly tied to his or her commitments as a citizen, rather than status as an analyst.
PAUL SMITH
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198206231
- eISBN:
- 9780191677045
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198206231.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
In contrast to the suffragist-feminist activities in 1914, the war, which came in September 1939, did not immediately result in the suspension of such events. The government recieved negative ...
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In contrast to the suffragist-feminist activities in 1914, the war, which came in September 1939, did not immediately result in the suspension of such events. The government recieved negative criticisms from certain prominent figures since women were not included in the preparations made for armed conflict, and these critics asserted that the suffragist effort should be further supported. When the war broke out, feminist activities had to be stopped, but these efforts were not restored after the war when the Armistice came and Petain gained power. Feminism was suppressed. This chapter points to several ideas regarding women's roles in the Vichy period since these entailed either resistance and collaboration or Vichy ideology.Less
In contrast to the suffragist-feminist activities in 1914, the war, which came in September 1939, did not immediately result in the suspension of such events. The government recieved negative criticisms from certain prominent figures since women were not included in the preparations made for armed conflict, and these critics asserted that the suffragist effort should be further supported. When the war broke out, feminist activities had to be stopped, but these efforts were not restored after the war when the Armistice came and Petain gained power. Feminism was suppressed. This chapter points to several ideas regarding women's roles in the Vichy period since these entailed either resistance and collaboration or Vichy ideology.
Rebecca Clifford
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199679812
- eISBN:
- 9780191759987
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199679812.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Cultural History
This concluding chapter reviews the key findings of the book. The book has endeavoured to show that Holocaust commemorations provide a compelling example of the uses and abuses of the memory of the ...
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This concluding chapter reviews the key findings of the book. The book has endeavoured to show that Holocaust commemorations provide a compelling example of the uses and abuses of the memory of the wartime past in the post-Cold War era. An examination of the evolution of these commemorations reveals much about the rapidly-transforming environment of Europe in the era since 1989; in particular, these commemorations show that there are very real links between the collapse of the Cold War political system, and the perception that the state's role in wartime crimes against Jews needed to be acknowledged officially for a range of reasons, whether to combat racism and anti-Semitism in the present, to respond to revisionist approaches to the history of Fascism or of Vichy, or to begin to articulate a new set of values for a changing political climate.Less
This concluding chapter reviews the key findings of the book. The book has endeavoured to show that Holocaust commemorations provide a compelling example of the uses and abuses of the memory of the wartime past in the post-Cold War era. An examination of the evolution of these commemorations reveals much about the rapidly-transforming environment of Europe in the era since 1989; in particular, these commemorations show that there are very real links between the collapse of the Cold War political system, and the perception that the state's role in wartime crimes against Jews needed to be acknowledged officially for a range of reasons, whether to combat racism and anti-Semitism in the present, to respond to revisionist approaches to the history of Fascism or of Vichy, or to begin to articulate a new set of values for a changing political climate.
Eric Jabbari
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199289639
- eISBN:
- 9780191730863
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199289639.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
Despite his misgivings, Laroque contributed to the elaboration of the policies of the ministry of labour during the early months of the Vichy Regime. During this time, he helped draft the legislation ...
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Despite his misgivings, Laroque contributed to the elaboration of the policies of the ministry of labour during the early months of the Vichy Regime. During this time, he helped draft the legislation which introduced the comités d’organisation, and was implicated in aborted attempts to implement corporatist policies and reform the social insurance system. Dismissed from the civil service because of his Jewish origins, he moved to Lyon, were he bacme involved in the activities of the Resistance. By the spring of 1943, he found himself assigned to the headquarters of the Free French movement in London, and he soon became involved in preparing the administrative personnel which would be entrusted with the direction of public services in the liberated areas of France. It was only in the autumn of 1944 that he returned to civilian life, and it was during this time that he was appointed director general of social insurance by the minister of labour.Less
Despite his misgivings, Laroque contributed to the elaboration of the policies of the ministry of labour during the early months of the Vichy Regime. During this time, he helped draft the legislation which introduced the comités d’organisation, and was implicated in aborted attempts to implement corporatist policies and reform the social insurance system. Dismissed from the civil service because of his Jewish origins, he moved to Lyon, were he bacme involved in the activities of the Resistance. By the spring of 1943, he found himself assigned to the headquarters of the Free French movement in London, and he soon became involved in preparing the administrative personnel which would be entrusted with the direction of public services in the liberated areas of France. It was only in the autumn of 1944 that he returned to civilian life, and it was during this time that he was appointed director general of social insurance by the minister of labour.
Emanuel Rota
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823245642
- eISBN:
- 9780823252824
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823245642.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Political History
Angelo Tasca, a pivotal figure in the political history of twentieth-century Italy, and indeed the history of Europe, is frequently overshadowed by his Fascist opponent Benito Mussolini or his ...
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Angelo Tasca, a pivotal figure in the political history of twentieth-century Italy, and indeed the history of Europe, is frequently overshadowed by his Fascist opponent Benito Mussolini or his Socialist and Communist colleagues (Antonio Gramsci and Palmiro Togliatti). Yet, as this biography reveals, Tasca—also known as Serra, A. Rossi, André Leroux, and XX—was in fact a key political player in the first half of the twentieth century and an ill-fated representative of the age of political extremes he helped to create. In this book, readers meet the Italian intellect and politician with fresh eyes as the text demystifies Tasca’s seemingly bizarre trajectory from revolutionary Socialist to Communist to supporter of the Vichy regime. The book demonstrates how Tasca, an indefatigable cultural operator and Socialist militant, tried all his life to maintain his commitment to scientific analysis in the face of the rise of fascism and Stalinism, but his struggle ended in a personal and political defeat that seemed to contradict all his life when he lent his support to the Vichy government. After his expulsion from the Italian Communist Party as a result of his refusal to conform to Stalinism, Tasca reinvented his life in Paris, where he participated in the intense political debates of the 1930s. His political choices were motivated by the desperate attempt to find an alternative between Nazism and Stalinism.Less
Angelo Tasca, a pivotal figure in the political history of twentieth-century Italy, and indeed the history of Europe, is frequently overshadowed by his Fascist opponent Benito Mussolini or his Socialist and Communist colleagues (Antonio Gramsci and Palmiro Togliatti). Yet, as this biography reveals, Tasca—also known as Serra, A. Rossi, André Leroux, and XX—was in fact a key political player in the first half of the twentieth century and an ill-fated representative of the age of political extremes he helped to create. In this book, readers meet the Italian intellect and politician with fresh eyes as the text demystifies Tasca’s seemingly bizarre trajectory from revolutionary Socialist to Communist to supporter of the Vichy regime. The book demonstrates how Tasca, an indefatigable cultural operator and Socialist militant, tried all his life to maintain his commitment to scientific analysis in the face of the rise of fascism and Stalinism, but his struggle ended in a personal and political defeat that seemed to contradict all his life when he lent his support to the Vichy government. After his expulsion from the Italian Communist Party as a result of his refusal to conform to Stalinism, Tasca reinvented his life in Paris, where he participated in the intense political debates of the 1930s. His political choices were motivated by the desperate attempt to find an alternative between Nazism and Stalinism.
Julie Fette
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450211
- eISBN:
- 9780801463990
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450211.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
In the 1930s, the French Third Republic banned naturalized citizens from careers in law and medicine for up to ten years after they had obtained French nationality. In 1940, the Vichy regime ...
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In the 1930s, the French Third Republic banned naturalized citizens from careers in law and medicine for up to ten years after they had obtained French nationality. In 1940, the Vichy regime permanently expelled all lawyers and physicians born of foreign fathers and imposed a two percent quota on Jews in both professions. On the basis of extensive archival research, this book finds that doctors and lawyers themselves, despite their claims to embody republican virtues, persuaded the French state to enact this exclusionary legislation. At the crossroads of knowledge and power, lawyers and doctors had long been dominant forces in French society: they ran hospitals and courts, doubled as university professors, held posts in parliament and government, and administered justice and public health for the nation. Their social and political influence was crucial in spreading xenophobic attitudes and rendering them more socially acceptable in France. The book traces the origins of this professional protectionism to the late nineteenth century, when the democratization of higher education sparked efforts by doctors and lawyers to close ranks against women and the lower classes in addition to foreigners. The legislatively imposed delays on the right to practice law and medicine remained in force until the 1970s, and only in 1997 did French lawyers and doctors formally recognize their complicity in the anti-Semitic policies of the Vichy regime.Less
In the 1930s, the French Third Republic banned naturalized citizens from careers in law and medicine for up to ten years after they had obtained French nationality. In 1940, the Vichy regime permanently expelled all lawyers and physicians born of foreign fathers and imposed a two percent quota on Jews in both professions. On the basis of extensive archival research, this book finds that doctors and lawyers themselves, despite their claims to embody republican virtues, persuaded the French state to enact this exclusionary legislation. At the crossroads of knowledge and power, lawyers and doctors had long been dominant forces in French society: they ran hospitals and courts, doubled as university professors, held posts in parliament and government, and administered justice and public health for the nation. Their social and political influence was crucial in spreading xenophobic attitudes and rendering them more socially acceptable in France. The book traces the origins of this professional protectionism to the late nineteenth century, when the democratization of higher education sparked efforts by doctors and lawyers to close ranks against women and the lower classes in addition to foreigners. The legislatively imposed delays on the right to practice law and medicine remained in force until the 1970s, and only in 1997 did French lawyers and doctors formally recognize their complicity in the anti-Semitic policies of the Vichy regime.
Jennifer M. Dueck
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264478
- eISBN:
- 9780191734779
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264478.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
This chapter discusses the French cultural networks, addressing various conflicts and contrary agendas among players who were all ostensibly united in their goal to provide a French education for ...
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This chapter discusses the French cultural networks, addressing various conflicts and contrary agendas among players who were all ostensibly united in their goal to provide a French education for local children. French culture in the Levant during the 1930s and 1940s is inseparable from the person of Gabriel Bounoure. He combined a single-minded devotion to promoting French culture with flexibility and sophistication in his approach to both Syro-Lebanese and French political struggles. The discussion also addresses the effects of the successive Vichy and Free French administrations on the status of three specific groups of private educators: the Catholic missions, the secular Mission laïque française, and the Jewish Alliance israélite universelle.Less
This chapter discusses the French cultural networks, addressing various conflicts and contrary agendas among players who were all ostensibly united in their goal to provide a French education for local children. French culture in the Levant during the 1930s and 1940s is inseparable from the person of Gabriel Bounoure. He combined a single-minded devotion to promoting French culture with flexibility and sophistication in his approach to both Syro-Lebanese and French political struggles. The discussion also addresses the effects of the successive Vichy and Free French administrations on the status of three specific groups of private educators: the Catholic missions, the secular Mission laïque française, and the Jewish Alliance israélite universelle.
Thomas J. Laub
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199539321
- eISBN:
- 9780191715808
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199539321.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Military History, European Modern History
Introductory remarks trace the historiography of the German army and occupied France from war crimes trials held immediately after the war to the present. As they adjudicated cases of treason and war ...
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Introductory remarks trace the historiography of the German army and occupied France from war crimes trials held immediately after the war to the present. As they adjudicated cases of treason and war crimes, jurists at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg defined a standard of appropriate conduct, convicted criminals, and exonerated those who resisted the Nazi regime. Building upon recent French scholarship, this manuscript rejects the binary model of collaboration and resistance in favor of Philippe Burrin's notion of accommodation. Both French society and the German army in France embraced elements of Nazi ideology and, at the same time, resisted select directives from Berlin. They balanced personal ideals against the necessities of life and accommodated demands from superiors in Berlin without necessarily endorsing all the goals of the Nazi regime.Less
Introductory remarks trace the historiography of the German army and occupied France from war crimes trials held immediately after the war to the present. As they adjudicated cases of treason and war crimes, jurists at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg defined a standard of appropriate conduct, convicted criminals, and exonerated those who resisted the Nazi regime. Building upon recent French scholarship, this manuscript rejects the binary model of collaboration and resistance in favor of Philippe Burrin's notion of accommodation. Both French society and the German army in France embraced elements of Nazi ideology and, at the same time, resisted select directives from Berlin. They balanced personal ideals against the necessities of life and accommodated demands from superiors in Berlin without necessarily endorsing all the goals of the Nazi regime.
Thomas J. Laub
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199539321
- eISBN:
- 9780191715808
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199539321.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, Military History, European Modern History
At the start of the Occupation, both French and German agencies accepted the fundamental legitimacy of the so‐called Jewish Question (Judenfrage) and adopted anti‐Semitic policies of defamation, ...
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At the start of the Occupation, both French and German agencies accepted the fundamental legitimacy of the so‐called Jewish Question (Judenfrage) and adopted anti‐Semitic policies of defamation, discrimination, and despoliation with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Perceiving Jews as a security threat, the military administration evicted Jews from a security zone along the Channel coast and played a major role in the ‘Aryanization’ of the French economy, but the MBF condemned ‘Aryanization’ on legal grounds and did not believe that Jews stood behind all resistance activity. The Vichy regime defamed and discriminated against Jews on its own accord, created the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs to despoil Jews, and ordered French police to incarcerate specific categories of Jews, but Pierre Laval objected to the arrest of assimilated French Jews because the roundups undermined support for his government. The SS and German embassy in Paris both championed the entire defamation, discrimination, despoliation, and deportation process, but they lacked the manpower and a legal mandate to act on their own before the summer of 1942. As the fortunes of war turned against the Reich, Hitler championed increasingly ruthless anti‐Semitic measures that culminated in the Final Solution.Less
At the start of the Occupation, both French and German agencies accepted the fundamental legitimacy of the so‐called Jewish Question (Judenfrage) and adopted anti‐Semitic policies of defamation, discrimination, and despoliation with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Perceiving Jews as a security threat, the military administration evicted Jews from a security zone along the Channel coast and played a major role in the ‘Aryanization’ of the French economy, but the MBF condemned ‘Aryanization’ on legal grounds and did not believe that Jews stood behind all resistance activity. The Vichy regime defamed and discriminated against Jews on its own accord, created the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs to despoil Jews, and ordered French police to incarcerate specific categories of Jews, but Pierre Laval objected to the arrest of assimilated French Jews because the roundups undermined support for his government. The SS and German embassy in Paris both championed the entire defamation, discrimination, despoliation, and deportation process, but they lacked the manpower and a legal mandate to act on their own before the summer of 1942. As the fortunes of war turned against the Reich, Hitler championed increasingly ruthless anti‐Semitic measures that culminated in the Final Solution.
Kevin Passmore
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199658206
- eISBN:
- 9780191745034
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199658206.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Political History
This book provides a new history of parliamentary conservatism and the extreme right in France during the successive crises of the years from 1870 to 1945. The book charts royalist opposition to the ...
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This book provides a new history of parliamentary conservatism and the extreme right in France during the successive crises of the years from 1870 to 1945. The book charts royalist opposition to the newly established Republic, the emergence of the nationalist extreme right in the 1890s, and the parallel development of republican conservatism. It moves on to the hitherto unstudied story of conservatism during the Great War, and then to the Right’s victory in the 1919 elections. The book charts the crisis of parliamentary conservatism in the interwar years, and explores the Right’s response to the rise of Fascism and Communism. It concludes by placing the Vichy regime, which governed France under the German Occupation, in the context of the history of conservative politics. This history is related to the struggle of those who saw themselves as ‘elites’ to preserve their leadership in the ‘age of the masses’. The book shows that conservatives of all stripes shared a common culture (notably including organicism and crowd theory), but that different factions used these ideas in different ways, for different purposes. Whereas previous studies have been primarily concerned to ‘categorize’ conservatives groups, for example as ‘fascist’, ‘liberal’, or ‘modern’, this study examines the way in which competing groups used such terms in complex struggles amongst themselves and with the left. The study is based on considerable archival research, as well as on knowledge of the vast body of recently published research in English and French.Less
This book provides a new history of parliamentary conservatism and the extreme right in France during the successive crises of the years from 1870 to 1945. The book charts royalist opposition to the newly established Republic, the emergence of the nationalist extreme right in the 1890s, and the parallel development of republican conservatism. It moves on to the hitherto unstudied story of conservatism during the Great War, and then to the Right’s victory in the 1919 elections. The book charts the crisis of parliamentary conservatism in the interwar years, and explores the Right’s response to the rise of Fascism and Communism. It concludes by placing the Vichy regime, which governed France under the German Occupation, in the context of the history of conservative politics. This history is related to the struggle of those who saw themselves as ‘elites’ to preserve their leadership in the ‘age of the masses’. The book shows that conservatives of all stripes shared a common culture (notably including organicism and crowd theory), but that different factions used these ideas in different ways, for different purposes. Whereas previous studies have been primarily concerned to ‘categorize’ conservatives groups, for example as ‘fascist’, ‘liberal’, or ‘modern’, this study examines the way in which competing groups used such terms in complex struggles amongst themselves and with the left. The study is based on considerable archival research, as well as on knowledge of the vast body of recently published research in English and French.
Joan Tumblety
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199695577
- eISBN:
- 9780191745072
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199695577.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Cultural History
This book is about interwar physical culture as a set of popular practices and as a field of ideas. It takes as its central subject the imagined failure of French manhood that was mapped out in this ...
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This book is about interwar physical culture as a set of popular practices and as a field of ideas. It takes as its central subject the imagined failure of French manhood that was mapped out in this realm by physical culturist ‘experts’, often physicians. Their diagnosis of intertwined crises in masculine virility and national vitality was surprisingly widely shared across popular and political culture. Theirs was a hygienist and sometimes overtly eugenicist conception of physical exercise and national strength that suggests the persistence of fin-de-siècle preoccupations with biological degeneration and regeneration well beyond the First World War. The book traces these patterns of thinking about the male body across a seemingly disparate set of voices, all of whom argued that the physical training of men offered a salve to France's real and imagined woes. In interrogating a range of sources, from get-fit manuals and the popular press, to the mobilizing campaigns of popular politics on left and right and official debates about physical education, the book illustrates how the realm of male physical culture could be presented as an instrument of social hygiene as well as an instrument of political struggle. In highlighting the purchase of these concerns in the interwar years, the book ultimately sheds light on the roots of Vichy's project for masculine regeneration after the military defeat of 1940.Less
This book is about interwar physical culture as a set of popular practices and as a field of ideas. It takes as its central subject the imagined failure of French manhood that was mapped out in this realm by physical culturist ‘experts’, often physicians. Their diagnosis of intertwined crises in masculine virility and national vitality was surprisingly widely shared across popular and political culture. Theirs was a hygienist and sometimes overtly eugenicist conception of physical exercise and national strength that suggests the persistence of fin-de-siècle preoccupations with biological degeneration and regeneration well beyond the First World War. The book traces these patterns of thinking about the male body across a seemingly disparate set of voices, all of whom argued that the physical training of men offered a salve to France's real and imagined woes. In interrogating a range of sources, from get-fit manuals and the popular press, to the mobilizing campaigns of popular politics on left and right and official debates about physical education, the book illustrates how the realm of male physical culture could be presented as an instrument of social hygiene as well as an instrument of political struggle. In highlighting the purchase of these concerns in the interwar years, the book ultimately sheds light on the roots of Vichy's project for masculine regeneration after the military defeat of 1940.
Peter Y. Medding
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195128208
- eISBN:
- 9780199854592
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195128208.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This chapter reviews the following books: Memory, the Holocaust, and French Justice: The Bousquet and Touvier Affairs. Hanover and London by Richard J. Golsan (ed.); Auschwitz and After: Race, ...
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This chapter reviews the following books: Memory, the Holocaust, and French Justice: The Bousquet and Touvier Affairs. Hanover and London by Richard J. Golsan (ed.); Auschwitz and After: Race, Culture, and “The Jewish Question” in France by Lawrence D. Kritzman (ed.); Rescue as Resistance: How Jewish Organizations Fought the Holocaust in France by Lucien Lazare, Le “Fichier juif”: Rapport de la commission présidée par René Rémand au Premier minister by René Rémond; A French Tragedy: Scenes of Civil War, Summer 1944 by Tzvetan Todorov; and Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France by Richard H. Weisberg.Less
This chapter reviews the following books: Memory, the Holocaust, and French Justice: The Bousquet and Touvier Affairs. Hanover and London by Richard J. Golsan (ed.); Auschwitz and After: Race, Culture, and “The Jewish Question” in France by Lawrence D. Kritzman (ed.); Rescue as Resistance: How Jewish Organizations Fought the Holocaust in France by Lucien Lazare, Le “Fichier juif”: Rapport de la commission présidée par René Rémand au Premier minister by René Rémond; A French Tragedy: Scenes of Civil War, Summer 1944 by Tzvetan Todorov; and Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France by Richard H. Weisberg.
Julian Jackson
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198207061
- eISBN:
- 9780191677465
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198207061.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This book examines French experiences of occupation during the ‘Black Years’ of 1940–1944. Pulling together previously separate ‘histories’ of occupation, resistance, ...
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This book examines French experiences of occupation during the ‘Black Years’ of 1940–1944. Pulling together previously separate ‘histories’ of occupation, resistance, and collaboration it presents a definitive history of the period. This is a more complex history than the traditional dichotomy between ‘collaboration’ and ‘resistance’, one in which the ideological frontiers between Vichy and the Resistance were often blurred. This study ranges from the politics of Marshal Pétain’s regime to the experiences of the ordinary French people, from surrender in 1940 to the purges of liberation. The book restores the organized Resistance to a more central role than has been customary in recent years and presents a new social history of the resistance which takes in the roles of foreigners, women, Jews, and peasants. It uncovers the long term roots of the Vichy regime in political and social conflict and cultural crisis stretching back to the Great War and concludes by tracing the lasting legacy and memory of occupation since 1945.Less
This book examines French experiences of occupation during the ‘Black Years’ of 1940–1944. Pulling together previously separate ‘histories’ of occupation, resistance, and collaboration it presents a definitive history of the period. This is a more complex history than the traditional dichotomy between ‘collaboration’ and ‘resistance’, one in which the ideological frontiers between Vichy and the Resistance were often blurred. This study ranges from the politics of Marshal Pétain’s regime to the experiences of the ordinary French people, from surrender in 1940 to the purges of liberation. The book restores the organized Resistance to a more central role than has been customary in recent years and presents a new social history of the resistance which takes in the roles of foreigners, women, Jews, and peasants. It uncovers the long term roots of the Vichy regime in political and social conflict and cultural crisis stretching back to the Great War and concludes by tracing the lasting legacy and memory of occupation since 1945.
Philip Towle
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198206361
- eISBN:
- 9780191677090
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198206361.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History, Military History
Forced disarmament has often been a preliminary to the destruction or subjugation of a defeated nation. Had Napoleon Bonaparte not been defeated, the disarmament of Prussia and Austria would have led ...
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Forced disarmament has often been a preliminary to the destruction or subjugation of a defeated nation. Had Napoleon Bonaparte not been defeated, the disarmament of Prussia and Austria would have led to the loss of their independence and their incorporation within the French Empire. In the case of Vichy France, the whole process of national destruction and imperial expansion gradually unfolded. After the stunning defeat of the French armies in 1940, most of France was occupied by Germany. The rump of the French state, with its capital at Vichy, maintained a vulnerable and uneasy independence. The new government under Marshal Pétain was allowed to keep only 100,000 men under arms. French officers were relieved that they could keep an army at all, but it suited Adolf Hitler to show leniency because this made it less likely that the French colonies would align themselves with Britain. When the allies overran French North Africa and consequently Hitler decided to strike in November 1942, the Vichy experiment ended.Less
Forced disarmament has often been a preliminary to the destruction or subjugation of a defeated nation. Had Napoleon Bonaparte not been defeated, the disarmament of Prussia and Austria would have led to the loss of their independence and their incorporation within the French Empire. In the case of Vichy France, the whole process of national destruction and imperial expansion gradually unfolded. After the stunning defeat of the French armies in 1940, most of France was occupied by Germany. The rump of the French state, with its capital at Vichy, maintained a vulnerable and uneasy independence. The new government under Marshal Pétain was allowed to keep only 100,000 men under arms. French officers were relieved that they could keep an army at all, but it suited Adolf Hitler to show leniency because this made it less likely that the French colonies would align themselves with Britain. When the allies overran French North Africa and consequently Hitler decided to strike in November 1942, the Vichy experiment ended.
Laura Jockusch
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199764556
- eISBN:
- 9780199979578
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199764556.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Historiography
Chapter 2 discusses the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation (Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine; CDJC) in France from its founding in April 1943 through 1953, when it had become a ...
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Chapter 2 discusses the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation (Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine; CDJC) in France from its founding in April 1943 through 1953, when it had become a permanent Holocaust research and memorial in Paris. Its activists were predominantly eastern European Jewish immigrants who saw themselves as part of French society. By documenting the suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Germans and the Vichy regime and stressing the Jewish involvement with the Résistance, they intended to show that Jews had made a significant contribution to the liberation of France and deserved to be accepted as equal citizens. While writing the history of the Jewish cataclysm proved a difficult and painful endeavor, the activists never doubted that their future was in France and that their documentation work would strengthen France’s return to liberal democracy and further the reintegration of the Jews into French society.Less
Chapter 2 discusses the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation (Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine; CDJC) in France from its founding in April 1943 through 1953, when it had become a permanent Holocaust research and memorial in Paris. Its activists were predominantly eastern European Jewish immigrants who saw themselves as part of French society. By documenting the suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Germans and the Vichy regime and stressing the Jewish involvement with the Résistance, they intended to show that Jews had made a significant contribution to the liberation of France and deserved to be accepted as equal citizens. While writing the history of the Jewish cataclysm proved a difficult and painful endeavor, the activists never doubted that their future was in France and that their documentation work would strengthen France’s return to liberal democracy and further the reintegration of the Jews into French society.
Edward Ducler Berenson, Vincent Duclert, and Christophe Prochasson (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449017
- eISBN:
- 9780801460647
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449017.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This book explores the history and meaning of the French Republic and the challenges it has faced. Founded in 1792, the French Republic has been defined and redefined by a succession of regimes and ...
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This book explores the history and meaning of the French Republic and the challenges it has faced. Founded in 1792, the French Republic has been defined and redefined by a succession of regimes and institutions, a multiplicity of symbols, and a plurality of meanings, ideas, and values. Although constantly in flux, the Republic has nonetheless produced a set of core ideals and practices fundamental to modern France's political culture and democratic life. Based on the influential Dictionnaire critique de la république, published in France in 2002, this book provides an encyclopedic survey of French republicanism since the Enlightenment. Divided into three sections—Time and History, Principles and Values, and Dilemmas and Debates—the book begins by examining each of France's five Republics and its two authoritarian interludes, the Second Empire and Vichy. It offers thematic essays on such topics as Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity; laicity; citizenship; the press; immigration; decolonization; anti-Semitism; gender; the family; cultural policy; and the Muslim headscarf debates. The book features updated translations of some of the most important essays from the French edition, as well as twenty-two newly commissioned English-language essays. Together they provide a state-of-the art appraisal of French republicanism and its role in shaping contemporary France's public and private life.Less
This book explores the history and meaning of the French Republic and the challenges it has faced. Founded in 1792, the French Republic has been defined and redefined by a succession of regimes and institutions, a multiplicity of symbols, and a plurality of meanings, ideas, and values. Although constantly in flux, the Republic has nonetheless produced a set of core ideals and practices fundamental to modern France's political culture and democratic life. Based on the influential Dictionnaire critique de la république, published in France in 2002, this book provides an encyclopedic survey of French republicanism since the Enlightenment. Divided into three sections—Time and History, Principles and Values, and Dilemmas and Debates—the book begins by examining each of France's five Republics and its two authoritarian interludes, the Second Empire and Vichy. It offers thematic essays on such topics as Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity; laicity; citizenship; the press; immigration; decolonization; anti-Semitism; gender; the family; cultural policy; and the Muslim headscarf debates. The book features updated translations of some of the most important essays from the French edition, as well as twenty-two newly commissioned English-language essays. Together they provide a state-of-the art appraisal of French republicanism and its role in shaping contemporary France's public and private life.
Joan Tumblety
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199695577
- eISBN:
- 9780191745072
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199695577.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Cultural History
This chapter outlines how responses to the catastrophic military collapse of 1940 cast it as proof of French physical failure, and considers how the Vichy regime, which invested more resources in ...
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This chapter outlines how responses to the catastrophic military collapse of 1940 cast it as proof of French physical failure, and considers how the Vichy regime, which invested more resources in sport and physical education than even the Popular Front, sought masculine renewal as part of its anti-republican reordering of French society. It also traces the fortunes of the protagonists examined across the book, showing how the physician-culturists of the 1920s and 1930s often brought their expertise to roles in Vichy administration, if not policy-making. The chapter argues that the regime's sustained engagement with the desire to rebuild French men in the wake of defeat shows — although not nearly so much as previously in the eugenicist language of the ‘regeneration of the race’ — not only a further instance of the political uses of male athleticism, but the purchase of interwar notions of the merits of ‘rational’ physical exercise.Less
This chapter outlines how responses to the catastrophic military collapse of 1940 cast it as proof of French physical failure, and considers how the Vichy regime, which invested more resources in sport and physical education than even the Popular Front, sought masculine renewal as part of its anti-republican reordering of French society. It also traces the fortunes of the protagonists examined across the book, showing how the physician-culturists of the 1920s and 1930s often brought their expertise to roles in Vichy administration, if not policy-making. The chapter argues that the regime's sustained engagement with the desire to rebuild French men in the wake of defeat shows — although not nearly so much as previously in the eugenicist language of the ‘regeneration of the race’ — not only a further instance of the political uses of male athleticism, but the purchase of interwar notions of the merits of ‘rational’ physical exercise.
Joan Tumblety
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199695577
- eISBN:
- 9780191745072
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199695577.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Cultural History
The short concluding remarks reiterate the interconnected themes that run thoughout the entire book — how a model of athletic muscular masculinity was shared across a very wide public, functioning as ...
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The short concluding remarks reiterate the interconnected themes that run thoughout the entire book — how a model of athletic muscular masculinity was shared across a very wide public, functioning as a veritable cult of virility that was deployed in arguments about a biologized national decline and the prospect of its reversal. It stresses that at least some of these connections survived the Liberation, and that their association with both Vichy and fascism should not lead us to reduce them to this connection with the radical right. The conclusion instead locates them in a set of transnational patterns of thinking that were firmly rooted across a broad constituency in 1920s and 1930s France.Less
The short concluding remarks reiterate the interconnected themes that run thoughout the entire book — how a model of athletic muscular masculinity was shared across a very wide public, functioning as a veritable cult of virility that was deployed in arguments about a biologized national decline and the prospect of its reversal. It stresses that at least some of these connections survived the Liberation, and that their association with both Vichy and fascism should not lead us to reduce them to this connection with the radical right. The conclusion instead locates them in a set of transnational patterns of thinking that were firmly rooted across a broad constituency in 1920s and 1930s France.
Kevin Passmore
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199658206
- eISBN:
- 9780191745034
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199658206.003.0014
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Political History
Under the Vichy government, which ruled France under the Occupation, the Right possessed greater influence than it had in the Republic. In the chaos of 1940, only the military command, business, ...
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Under the Vichy government, which ruled France under the Occupation, the Right possessed greater influence than it had in the Republic. In the chaos of 1940, only the military command, business, Church, and administration were in a position to take power, for parliamentarians, parties, and leagues had been discredited and dispersed. The Right was influential in certain parts of the regime, and greatly influenced anti-Jewish policy. Yet the right had to share power with a diverse coalition of organizers of various stripes, centrists, and elements converted from the Left. Under Darlan in 1941–1942, the extreme right was influential.Less
Under the Vichy government, which ruled France under the Occupation, the Right possessed greater influence than it had in the Republic. In the chaos of 1940, only the military command, business, Church, and administration were in a position to take power, for parliamentarians, parties, and leagues had been discredited and dispersed. The Right was influential in certain parts of the regime, and greatly influenced anti-Jewish policy. Yet the right had to share power with a diverse coalition of organizers of various stripes, centrists, and elements converted from the Left. Under Darlan in 1941–1942, the extreme right was influential.
