I saw an Oliver Stone-narrated history of the US, on Showtime, and it focuses on WWII and the years after.
One of the things he stated in the show was that France decided to cooperate with their German conquerers because they were “anti-semitic to the core”.
Is this actually true? I have never heard this before, so my initial reaction was “not true”. However, i don’t know much about the French view on Jews, either before WWII or now, so I thought I’d ask you all.
I put it in GD because I wasn’t sure how this would go, but I suspected there would be some debate on what France’s stance is on Jews. If there is a factual answer to this question, perhaps it belongs in GQ, but I suspect there will be differing opinions.
I’m curious to hear from anyone who is currently or has recently lived in France for any length of time to give a perspective from “ground level”, so to speak, on French attitudes now. Also, of course, I’m interested in why Oliver Stone said what he did about the French with such strong conviction.
Well, there was the Dreyfus affair several decades earlier. But I don’t know if antisemitism ran deeper than in other nations of the time. The Vichy government was supported by certain right-wing elements who may have not been big fans of the Jews, but I really doubt that was their sole reason, or even a major reason for supporting occupation. Occam’s razor might say that they were able to a) survive a German invasion and b) benefit politically from it, because other options seemed less certain. If France’s core was affected, then where did Germany’s antisemitism lie? In the core’s core? Italy wasn’t specifically antisemitic, and I’m not sure the Japanese government even knew what Jews were, but they still buddied up with Germany for facisty reasons. So not to say that antisemitism was a motivation, but I don’t know of any evidence that that was a major reason.
And of course, one explanation is that Oliver Stone may be a hack in some ways, if those were actually his opinion and not a script.
We cooperated with the Germans because they had conquered us. It’s not like we had much say in the matter. However : I don’t know that I would go so far as to say “to the core”, but yes, 1930s France was very anti-semitic. It’s not like it was a sudden shift, either - remember the Dreyfus Affair ? The Milice is infamous for having been *very *eager to find Jews to give to the Nazis as well (also communists).
Which is not to say that every Frenchman was like that - there are quite a few examples throughout the war of French families hiding Jews or helping them escape through Spain for example.
But the sort of turds that rose to the top thanks to the occupation government ? Sure. I’d say your documentary mixed cause and consequence : we didn’t collaborate because we were antisemites ; but antisemitic elements among us gained a lot of power because we collaborated. Does that make sense ?
On the one hand, before the holocaust, anti-semitism, in differing degrees, was quite deeply ingrained all over Europe (and in America too, I believe). On the other hand, France, in particular, had been through the long political trauma of the Dreyfus affair at the beginning of the 20th century This was all about a grave miscarriage of justice caused, in part, by anti-semitism. However, the upshot was that the Dreyfusards, the supporters of Dreyfus (the falsely convicted Jew), eventually won, and his innocence was recognized, along with the fact that an irrational anti-semitism had been behind his wrongful conviction, and the resistance to getting him exonerated.
I would say, therefore, that although there was certainly still much anti-semitism in France by the time of WWII, perhaps particularly amongst the more conservative members of the establishment (the ideological descendants of the anti-Dreyfusards, who presumably became the core of the collaborationist Vichy regime), the French as a whole were probably more conscious of the dangers and wrongness of anti-semitism than were the people of most other nations.
You could maybe say that pretty much every “Christian” nation was “anti-semitic to the core” back then, but it seems particularly unfair to single out the French in this regard. It probably went less deeply and consistently “to the core” in France than it did in most other places.
This should give pause to anyone thinking that the show was representative of history.
France certainly had a strong element of anti-semitism. However, so did nearly every nation in Europe. The Netherlands might have been somewhat less anti-semitic than many of their neighbors and Denmark famously organized the flight of nearly all Danish Jews to Sweden to avoid deportation to the death camps, yet every European nation provided thousands of volunteers to join the Waffen-SS.
That is irrelevant to the matter of the defense of France. In 1939-1940, the Germans were known for treating Jews poorly, but the plan for extermination was not known, (or even fully organized), and French soldiers fought to resist invasion. They did not shirk their duty based on some imaginary fellowship with Germany because it was antagonistic to Jews. Similarly, France was not known for “willingly cooperating” after the conquest. Different political leaders took different positions in regard to the conquerors, but there was certainly no more of a pro-Nazi/anti-Jewish cooperation in France than there was in other European countries.
As a way to reserve troops for his planned attack on the Soviet Union, Hitler offered to stay out of Southern and Southwestern France, allowing the French to set up a rump state in Vichy. It is likely that the men who were selected to (and agreed to) serve the Vichy government were more likely to be sympathetic to the Nazis and more hostile to Jews, but, again, their behavior was not significantly different than the behavior of other national leaders throughout Europe who agreed to be included in Nazi puppet governments.
Oh yes. If the assertion was that we *let *them invade, then that’s just Truther-crazy. Even more so if the idea is that France let Germany invade so that it would get the opportunity to… persecute its Jews ? What ? We couldn’t do that on our own ?
That however is sort of debatable. In some respects, the Pétain government seemed to almost seek to out-Nazi the Nazis, or to pre-emptively give them what they wanted in order to be left with a modicum of autonomy in return and not be just another puppet state, but maybe be considered as equals or at least a useful and trustworthy pet. For example, as I said the Milice quickly started rooting out “enemies of the State” unprompted by the Germans.
That being said, I don’t know as much as I should about the internal politics of other German puppets, so maybe other countries were just the same.
No need to single out the French. Jews were relegated to ghettos in many European countries, and things were far from ideal in the US.
I have been reading a lot of older books from Project Gutenberg. Antisemitism seems to be the default…if you want to make a place seem seedy, fill it with Jews. If you want to indicate someone is up to no good, have him seen in the company of Jews. Those things didn’t make it into the screenplays for Masterpiece theater. Reading the originals was a bit jarring. Wonder if the Hardy boys ever attended a Klan rally?
Alas, yes. Anti-Semitism was “in the air” in those days. American writer Robert W. Chambers, and British writer G.K. Chesterton wrote things against the Jews that would be inconceivable today – and these were two of the more intelligent and thoughtful writers of the era!
That’s too vast an issue and I’m not knowledgeable enough to discuss it. However, I want to mention an important element regarding antisemitism in France pre WWII.
There had been a long standing and strong conservative, catholic and anti-republican movement in France from the mid 19th to the mid 20th century, which had a great influence on political life. Towards the end of the 19th century, it tended to adopt an antisemitic stance (as seen in the already mentioned Dreyfus affair) and later on, after WWI, tended to become populist. The 30s were agitated in France as they were in most of Europe. This movement became very active, and antisemitism had become one of their main arguments. It is exemplified by Charles Mauras and his party “l’Action Francaise”. In 1936, a left-wing coalition called the Popular Front, led by Jewish prime minister Leon Blum won the elections and introduced a number of significant reforms. This caused a great commotion and violent reactions in this part of the French right wing. I’m not going to say that all Vichy leaders were coming from this school of thought, but there was a certain closeness, it provided them with an ideological basis (and intellectual support : infamously the writer Celine, for instance), and its members rallied enthousiastically the collaborationist regime and even tended to push for more. And anti-republicanism (not quite uncommon in France until WWII), at least, was a ground of agreement.
Antisemitism in France before WWII can’t be competely separated from political issues. That’s also why the Dreyfus affair became such a big deal. There was much more at stakes than simply the fate of some Jewish captain. It was crystalizing a major ideological fight.
I have trouble coming up with any other major European country whose leaders cooperated with the Nazis to the extent that France’s did (motives including general fascist sympathies and desire for (limited) power and profit, along with anti-Semitism).
What still is mind-boggling is that commanders of the French fleet refused to join the British when they had the chance in 1940, preferring to go down in flames.
“The Vichy regime, which included Admiral Darlan, and the German government made much propaganda play of the British ‘atrocity’. Posters showing drowning French sailors and proclaiming ‘Remember Mers-el-Kebir’ appeared all over France.”
There’s been a tendency, at least in popular media to overemphasize the Resistance and overlook the embarassment of Vichy collaborators. Both are part of the historical record.
It would be more accurate to say that France was very severely divided, on the issue of anti-Semitism as well as on other issues. The significance of the Dreyfuss Affair isn’t solely that a significant portion of the French considered hom guilty because he was a Jew … it is also that an opposing significant portion of the French thought that attitude was outrageous.
The Germans were adept at exploiting these divisions within France to their own benefit.
I read in at least one history book that up until the rise of the Nazis, Germany was actually one of the more hospitable places towards Jews in Europe.
I’m not sure there’s a way to rate levels of anti-semitism in some semi-objective way. Anyone know of any actual learned papers on the topic?
There was an interesting article in the most recent issue of Intelligent Life (a quarterly publication from The Economist) which details a wartime love affair between a German solider and a Parisian woman. It provides some insight into the sentiments towards Jews during the war. You can read the online version here.
There was among many French people as much animosity to the British as to any other power, and felt that Britain would only fight as long as it had Frenchmen to fight its battles for it. Particularly in 1940 almost the entire world expected that Britain would make terms with Germany as fighting alone was ludicrous. It was Mers-el-Kebir that put paid to that, but the cost was driving many wavering officers into Vichy arms (although also driving many in de Gaulle’s, too).
It really was. Germany was the birthplace of the Reform Movement and German Jews had achieved full emancipation by the 1880s. Most German Jews were very well integrated in German society and the Weimer Republic saw many Jews holding public office. Then Hitler came to power in '33 and in the space of less than a decade Jews were stripped of every legal & human right as well as their property until they were being marched naked into death chambers.
Jewish leaders had feared a massive state-sanction purge for generations, but in in Germany (Russia was a different story) Even after the Nazis came to power nobody though it was get as bad as it did until it actually happened. Pre-war Nazi policy was aimed at getting Jews to emigrate (a process greatly hindered by restrictions on capital flight). The Nazis were also historically unique in that that they viewed Jews purely as a biological racial group. Unlike previous times in European history conversion didn’t save you (indeed many of the “Jews” exterminated were practicing Christians, including members of the clergy).
It’s not surprising at all. The French Navy still reported to the French government, not the British one. It was much more mind-boggling that the British would open fire on their former allies for, as it turns out, no good reason whatsoever. Admiral Darlan had given Churchill his word that the French fleet would never fall into German hands, and indeed even after Mers El Kébir the French fleet scuttled itself at Toulon when the Germans tried to seize it on November 27, 1942 when Germany occupied the Vichy run southern part of France in response to the Allied landings in French North Africa two years later. Churchill was aware of the kind of order he was giving when he wrote Admiral Somerville, the commander of Force H charged with carrying them out that
The action was strongly opposed by Somerville and his superior in overall command of naval forces in the Mediterranean, Admiral Cunningham. After carrying out his orders,
That Churchill felt he couldn’t risk having the French fleet fall into German hands is perhaps understandable, but the French navy’s refusal of the ultimatum from their former allies was even more understandable.
Most of Europe was anti-semitic to various degrees. In Poland anti-semitism was on the rise before WWII, the Poles little suspecting that they would soon be equal with the Jew in the republic of the grave.
France had a number of Jews who had fled overt persecution in Germany to less obvious but still present anti-semitism in their new choice of home, again with no inclination that in the years to come they would be in mortal danger. French collaboration in the expulsion of Jews to the death camps is documented, one of the most infamous being the Vel d’Hiv roundup.
Jews were blamed for dragging France down into ‘England’s war’, in solidarity with Nazi propaganda that Jews had conspired to cause European conflict and should pay the price. An interesting read on France’s role in the shoah and which prominent Frenchmen revealed themselves to be anti-semitic.
But don’t point the finger too strongly at France. Even dear old Blighty and across the pond things weren’t too friendly either. When Jews tried to escape Nazis to the British administered Palestine mandate the attitude was one of annoyance; “A disproportionate amount of time in this office is wasted in dealing with these wailing Jews.” Google “MS St. Louis” for how tolerant the New World was to Jews fleeing Hitler’s gangsters.
Although to be fair, the scuttling at Toulon was two years later and a lot had changed since then - the two sides were more evenly matched with the war having no end in sight. In 1940 it was assumed the war was over bar the shouting and that Churchill would be made to step down for someone like Halifax to negotiate with Germany. Admiral Darlan had given the British Government his word before the Armistice that, as France’s naval chief of staff, he would order all French warships to sail to UK ports in the event of a French surrender , but he ended up being rather duplicitous and was known to be not terribly fond of the British - indeed, a conversation with US Ambassador Bullitt, he indicated pleasure at the prospect of a British defeat. He had also been appointed to several senior government positions under Marshal Petain before Mers-el-Kebir, which doesn’t bode much confidence.
What’s more, it wasn’t just about the French promising not to take those ships, but the risk of Hitler simply seizing them. Even if Darlan would have remained true to his word and stopped this, nobody in Britain could ever be certain and the Royal Navy would have to strategize on the assumption that they would be dealing with the French fleet as well as the German and Italian- the French fleet was at the time the fourth largest in the world. Moreover, the British were already blocking the Continent as best they could, which meant hostilities with Vichy were inevitable.
The problem wit judging the French as anti-semitic, based on that perspective, is that it ignores the fact that in every other nation, the leaders were explicitly puppets while in France, the leaders were placed in a position with a purported level of independence–with, of course,the certain knowledge that their “independence” was nothing more than a facade that let the Germans not have to bivouac troops across the entire range of the “independent” region.
Any other national leader could always use the “following orders” defense or, at least, appear to have been more of a puppet than Petain and his cronies.
Beyond that, even if one attributed every Vichy government action to anti-semitism, (which would certainly be an oversimplification), that would not indicate that the French people were especially anti-semitic. The government was still an imposed one with its members specifically selected for association with the Nazis.
There are a number of examples of French people betraying their fellow citizens who happened to be Jews, but a blanket assertion such as the one that Stone made needs much more documentary support than a mere claim by Stone.
