Nazi war crimes like concentration camps weren’t really well known until Germany was totally overran in 1945 and the press was allowed everywhere which makes me wonder what all did the French know about the Nazis when they surrendered in 1940? Did they have any idea whatsoever what kind of human rights abusers the Nazis were when they surrendered? I assume they had no idea about the genocide the nazis were about to implement, but did they know about the nature of Nazi torture, concentration camps, dictatorship, etc?
They probably knew that the Germans had just beat the stuffing out of the French army, rolled right across the countryside and into Paris, and were holding a knife to France’s figurative throat and belly.
Actually, what they really knew was that while setting up new lines south of Paris was possible, it’s also the kind of fighting that Marshall Petain was most familiar with from the last war. And he made the choice that anything was better than that.
Which meant he accepted, in the treaty that established Vichy France, that the French Navy was going to be handed over to the Kreigsmarine, and that the racial purity laws of the Reich were to be enforced - by the Vichy government. I can’t recall exactly when ‘The Final Solution’ with the work and extermination camps began, but there were at least some pretty strong hints about it.
On the one hand, I can accept that sometimes one does have to consider what can be salvaged from the wreckage - I also think that Petain sacrificed far too much for far too little. OTOH, the scorched earth partisan fighting taking place in the Balkans, while very useful to the Allies also directly contributed to the mess that the Balkans have been in since the early 90’s. It’s hard to say what Petain should have done. Certainly I believe that the Vichy agreement was one thing that helped France return to prosperity in the post war years. Still doesn’t change that I think Petain betrayed himself, and France, by accepting it.
There are perhaps two misconceptions here. First, the extermination camps weren’t yet operating when the Germans took Paris in June 1940. They didn’t start large scale exterminations in Auschwitz/Birkenau until the spring of 1942. Treblinca opened in July 1942. While the Nazis had forced labor camps sas early as 1933, most historians would agree that the genoicde of the Holocaust didn’t begin until late in 1941.
Secondly, the idea that the Holocuast was unknown before the allied troops arrived just isn’t true. Ther were scattered accounts of the attrocities as early as 1941 and detailed reports given by prisoners who had escaped from Auschwitz by 1943. The fact that millions had been killed in the camps was widely reported in early 1944. One can simply go back and look at the articles in the New York Times or other contemporary papers to verify this.
According to the National Holocaust Museum, by 1944 there were many Jewish leaders in the US pressing for FDR to make Auschwitz a priority bombing target, just to stop the killings there.
True, and whether or not it should have been done is still a very controversial subject (IIRC, the current scholarly consensus is that while it could have been done that it would not have had much effect.)
Not only that, but the propaganda effect would have been very detrimental to the Allies, I think. Photographs of the inmates after such a bombing attack could have been easily doctored to shown a ‘hospital’ full of ailing patients that was blown up. (Explaining why the hospital was so far from any major population center would have stretched credibility to the limits, but it would have put the Allies on the defensive from a propaganda POV, I suspect.)
I wonder if any outside source verifies this.
I doubt that Allied leaders would have given any serious consideration to any such mission. Destroying rail lines would have been far more effective at stopping/slowing extermination at the camps since most of those murdered were killed within hours of stepping off the trains; only a relatively small number of victims were permanently housed at the camps. Such damage to railroad lines, switch houses, locomotives, and the like was already being done to a pretty great extent. Don’t underestimate the persistence of the Nazis in this regard; they were suffering great problems in 1944-1945 with their rail system. Transportation of Jews was not something they should have given any priority. The maniacal adherence to a plan and blind obedience to authority, no matter how ridiculous was the greatest flaw of the master race.
sewalk, IIRC the display properly, they were excerpting letters sent from various groups to the President.
It wasn’t. It was attempted along the Loire river, 100 km or so south of Paris, but the germans had crossed the river even before a defense line could be established and all the bridges blowed off. They actually held most of France, not just Paris and the north (and the surrendering didn’t occur immediatly after the fall of Paris) at the moment of the armistice, and were advancing unnoposed and quickly in southern france. At the moment of the cease-fire, the germans weren’t heading towards Paris, but towards Bordeaux where the government had fled (look at a map).
The choice wasn’t between fighting in France and surrendering, but between surrendering and forming a government in exile in the french colonies (and keeping the fleet, which was the point the british were most interested in). Mainland France was aready lost without hope.
An option briefly proposed was to try to hold Britanny (the peninsula west of France) in order to allow an hypothetical future counterattack/landing. But this option was considered unfeasible by the french generals, and besides, at this point, the british didn’t have any intent to send troops in France (and actually, I sort of doubt Britanny would have held until June 1944 
).
Well…wrong again. The french fleet wasn’t handed to the Kriegsmarine. Part of it was to be disarmed and stay in a southern France port, where it would be scuttled some years later, when the German occupied Vichy France too following the allies landing in north Africa. The rest,staying in anorth-african port was sunk in port by the british navy soon ater the french surrendering, upon the refusal of the commanding admiral to accept the british ultimatum (which was to join/surrender to the british navy or scuttle the ships. The british were indeed afraid that the germans would evetually eize the french navy. But this didn’t happen. So, please, refrain from posting when you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Don’t forget also that the french didn’t hav our 100% insight. For instanc, it was largely suspected that the United Kingdom, having few hopesof winning the war given the circumstances, would accept a lenient peace treaty offered by Germany, whichwuldhave made the eventual peace treaty with France even more untenable. Another concern (in partuicular for the french head of staff and also apparently for Petain) was the french soldiers, in particular the army surrounded in north-eastern France. It was assumed that a quick armistice would allow them to be disarmed and sent back home rather that taken as war prisonners (they were taken prisonners anyway, actually).
I would als add that some proeminent politicians adamantly refused to leave an occupied country, out of principle and the integrity of some of them, can’t be discussed, like one of the ministers who was later executed (and who was Jewish), to whom Churchill had offered to become the head of the french government in exile (De Gaulle was picked because Churchill really couldn’t find anybody else. He would have prefered anyone but him, essentially).
I must mention that Churchill offered to create an united Franco-British governement if france didn’t surrender. This option was apparently received ratheer favourably by the french premier, but he resigned on the same day to be replaced by Petain.
I’m not sure he betrayed himself that much. Petain was strongly reactionnary, and deeply disliked and dispised the re-war french political life.
As for betraying france, he didn’t just seize the power all by himself. The french parliament voted at an overwhelming majority (I believe there were 40 “no” or so, out of several hundreds MPs) to put an end to the republic and grant full powers to Petain, knowing prfectly that his opinion was that an armistice should be signed immediatly. So, it’s not like he betrayed everybody and was the only one thinking that way.
And AFAIK, the population was extremely happy with the armistice. What else do you expect? That they would think about the anti-Jewish laws in Germany? No ay…they waere thinking about being bombed, having their husbands killed on the front, being invaded by the germans, fleeing, and all sorts of similar things.
I’m going to add something about the existing “hints” regarding what was happening in Germany at this time. Actually two things :
-When I was a teenager, I asked my father (who lived throught the period) whether, dutring the war/ occupation, people had heard about the concentration camps. He told me that nobody had heard of them. Only much much later, would I learn that my father was himself deported, a fact which is going to give some credence to his statement about his utter ignorance beforehand.
-There has been a lot of “hints” about the Rwandan genocide when it took place. Anybody who made everything he could to have it stop is now allowed to criticize people who ignored vague rumors and some articles in the “New York Times” in time of war. The others should better think twice before condemning too harshly.
I remember that in his movie “Shoah”, Claude Lanzmann interviewed several direct witnesses who stated the allies authorities had been informed. If I’m not mistaken, I think that one of the interviewed persons was directly involved with the discussions with these authorities.
Now, it doesn’t necessarily mean that said authorities fully believed what they were told.
Both are true. Many histories of the time claim this and the Allied leaders never gave it serious consideration.
However, it’s been said, and I agree, that while concentration camps had been used for decades - IIRC, they’re usually cited as originated by the British in the Boer War - death camps for the specific purpose of annihilating a people were unknown and unthinkable. Medical experimentation alone would have surprised most everyone.
Anti-semitism was probably as rampant in France as it was in Germany, if not as officially sanctioned and encouraged, and the trade-off in Petain’s eyes of Jews for what he would have seen as the true French people was probably an easy choice to make. While no one would have expected a kind and gentle fate for those who entered them, the full extent of the horrors of the camps probably could not have been predicted or understood by anyone at the time.
The Holocaust is still mostly a red herring. The Nazis’ record before the fall of France was completely clear. They rooted out all resistance in Austria and Czechoslovakia and were particularly barbaric in the invasion of Poland. Torture was a simple means to an end. Resistance fighters knew full well that capture meant horrific torture and likely death. Nobody was even expected to hold out: codes, drop points, and other secrets were routinely changed whenever a known capture was made because it was simply assumed that the person would be broken. Whole towns were destroyed if anyone in them killed a German. That a large percentage of the French continued to work the underground even under such knowledge is a tribute to their bravery, and a condemnation of Pétain.
Did the French surrender mean that a far larger majority of the French would survive the war than the Poles? Almost certainly yes. Did the surrender spare the country the incredible devastation that accompanied WWI and was still blighting its entire northeast a mere 30 years later? Yes again. It’s not a decision I would ever want to have to make, especially in the face of a victorious enemy sitting in my capital.
But the historic fact that the Nazis are now known to be even worse than they appeared in 1940 should not be confused with how bad the Nazis appeared then. While a great many people in the U.S. managed to live in sheer denial of the realities of Nazi Germany, it’s highly unlikely that Pétain had that luxury.
That’s exagerrated. there’s only one example of this in France (since you’re refering to france. maybe it happened in other countries) , and it was actually a village, not a town (Oradour-sur-Glane). Usually, a number of hostages (people detained for various reasons, or sometimes just rounded up) were executed in reprisal.
I don’t mean that it wasn’t horriic enough, but I thought I should correct wild exagerations.
I wasn’t trying to say that I thought that there was much of a chance of a successful military solution. I’d not realized that there was an attempt to stand at the Loire, and given the pre-war French emphasis on the building and maintenance of static defenses along the French-German border, and their complete ignoring of the potential of mobile warfare, I don’t think they’d have been able to stop them.
And, like I said, Petain’s WWI experience had to have him leery of any kind of static front warfare without the massive defenses of the Maginot Line. The expression for the generation of men who came of age during the time of WWI is “The Lost Generation.” And that label has a lot of truth to it.
Actually, I was basing that on the very real fear that the British had that the fleet at Algiers would be turned over, intact, to the Germans. I’d thought the attack at Algiers had been AFTER the surrender, not before. (And thus justified by the British as an attack on an ally of Germany.)
I’m sorry to have offended you, clairobscur. I know that Petain was in a damned untenable situation. I still tend to think he gave up far more than he salvaged, but, as you pointed out later - it’s easy to play Monday morning quarterback. I’d said there were hints of the problems that the Jews were having in the Reich. And that’s it. My criticism of the Vichy treaty isn’t that it didn’t defend the Jews, honestly. It’s that what was salvaged was so little. I wasn’t trying to make ‘Surrender Monkey’ jokes and if I gave that impression I heartily apologize. Given that in WWI the route the Germans used then was through the low countries, I cannot understand HOW the French army believed that fortifications along the French-German border were the best way to prevent the same thing from happening again. But once that decision had been made - and lost, I agree Petain had bupkiss to deal with. If he’d gotten his army back, as civilians, even civilians under parole, I wouldn’t be so critical of the Vichy treaty.
I’m also aware just how well-liked de Gaul was by most anyone who dealt with him from the British or American armies or diplomatic corps, and that he was the leader of the French Gov’t in Exile because he was the only person available.
I’ll admit that my answer and conclusions about Petain weren’t based upon what he could reasonably know at the time he surrendered. Rather it was meant to be a criticism of the results he actually achieved. In the end I don’t see that the Vichy treaty actually salvaged all that much for the French people. I know I don’t have a clue what I’d have done in his place. I also know he wasn’t a dictator, nor did he impose his will on France, he was more a spokesperson for the general feeling at the time - in many ways, like de Gaul, he was the only man available for the job.
I also believe that he continued to support, and did his best to fulfill the treaty obligations long after it became clear that he hadn’t salvaged much of anything.
That, more than anything else, is why I said that I felt Petain had betrayed himself. Not that seeking a peace in an untenable military situation was the betrayal.
I didn’t mean to imply that Petain or the French people knew the particulars of what was going to happen. As Expano Mapcase said, the full extent of the future plans the Nazis had for the Jews was beyond the imagination of anyone in 1940. The only charge I’d meant to put with the comment about racial purity laws was that he was willing to accept second class citizenship for some of the people in France. That is still a far cry from actually pushing them onto cattlecars. Or even taking their property.
No. There weren’t “hints” about the Rwandan genocide. It was right out in the open. The problem I have with using the Rwandan genocide as an example is that it wasn’t the secret that the Nazi Holocaust was. And, unlike the Holocaust, it was done in about 6 months, IIRC.
A better modern example is the Bosnia genocide. There the gov’t involved was hiding their actions. And it was a government program. Not mob violence, as much of the Rwandan genocide was. And it took place over a much longer time, so that the international community had more of an opportunity to act than the Rwandan genocide allowed.
Or we can talk about the Sudanese genocide still going on, if we want to discuss failures of the international community.
However, none of those situations are parallel with the situation that Petain faced, or that France ended up getting from the Vichy treaty. And, again, I do know that Petain was trying to save what he could. And almost nothing left to bargain with. And he’d been through the Hell of WWI, too, which had to be another factor in his thinking.
I don’t believe it happened often in other countries, either. The destruction of Lidice in Czechoslovakia, after Reinhart Heydrich’s assassination is the instance that is most infamous - and that because it was destroyed in spite of all reasonable evidence that no one there had had any involvement with the British assassination team.
On the other hand - that it happened at all, even once, was enough to chill the blood of anyone, I’d think. That the French Resistance (Poland and Russia were different in that the Nazi fist was so brutal there, even without partisans to give excuse for atrocities, my understanding is that there was little reason for people to avoid trouble with the garrisons, since it wouldn’t couldn’t be counted upon to reliably protect anything, anyway.) was so determined in spite of such events is nothing short of amazing.
Technically France didn’t surrender to Germany in 1940. What they did was request an armistice. Usually an armistice is a temporary situation which only last a few weeks or maybe months. But Germany refused to negotiate a formal surrender until the war was over - which they originally figured would only be a few weeks until Britain gave up as well. This didn’t go quite as planned of course, so France spent the next four years not knowing what they were actually going to be forced to give up if Germany won the war.
When I said this, I was referring to the claim that manyJewish leaders were asking that the concentration camps specifically be bombed. I am well aware that many Jewish leaders did ask the US government to “do something” about the camps. The only “something” that was felt to have a good chance of succes was to end the war as quickly as possible. Bombing the Nazi rail system would obviously be an important part of this.
It’s getting very OT for what was known in France in 1940, but …
As regards specific requests to bomb the extermination camps - which, by the time this became feasible, meant Auschwitz - it wasn’t so much a case of many Jewish leaders, so much that the ones who did were significant.
There were at least two significant such specific requests. The World Jewish Council appealed to the US government’s War Refugee Board in August 1944 to bomb the gas chambers at Auschwitz. That was rejected by John McCloy, the Assistant Secretary of War, within the week, mainly on the grounds that it would divert essential air power resources.
Rather more crucially, the Jewish Agency for Palestine - which was recognised by the UK as representing those Jews in Palestine - submitted a proposal to the British government on July 11th 1944 arguing that Auschwitz be targeted. This acknowledged that an attack was unlikely to make much difference to the inmates, but argued that it’d be of symbolic and moral advantage to the Allies. It’s this proposal that got closest to being implemented; Churchill and Eden thought the idea worth pursuing, but it got quashed within Whitehall. As a result, this is the chain of events that most of the controversy has concentrated on.
Martin Gilbert’s Auschwitz and the Allies (1981) is the famous account of what was known in Washington and London about the camp and - just as crucially - when. It’s easy to overestimate what was known early on, but the intelligence picture (mainly via escaped prisoners) was fairly clear by 1944 and was known to both the governments and the likes of the Jewish Agency.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to give the impression that this was a common occurrence. Town and village are also terms that tend to be used interchangeably as small entities.
Reprisal executions of rounded-up hostages are good enough evidence of a pathological mentality, however.
sewalkIt wasn’t as if the Nazi rail system wasn’t being targeted; it’s just that the bomber command wanted to continue targeting the rail lines being used for transport of strategic materials as a priority.
That is exactly my position. Rail lines were strategic targets of a very high priority. The lines running between Germany and Poland (the ones used for shipping Jews east out of Germany and the western occupied countries) were being used to move food and materiel produced in the occupied eastern countries west. These rail lines were already strategic targets (granting that the spurs running into the camps were not strategic targets). Bombing the camps would have likely done little to slow the exterminations; it’s not as if the Nazis were not resourceful in this regard.