# WWII - France "anti-semitic to the core."? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 15, 2013, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-france-anti-semitic-to-the-core/671277 "2013-10-15T03:00:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2013, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-france-anti-semitic-to-the-core/671277/21 "2013-10-16T19:36:04Z")
> [@Malden\_Capell](#): > > 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. Who was assuming that? Churchill and the UK were remaining quite defiant in the face of defeat on the continent. At any rate, if the war was presumed to be all over bar the shouting, then there was no need to attack the French fleet. > [@](#): > > 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 Do you have a cite for this? All that I have ever read is his words in person to Churchill [were](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Darlan) “No French ship will ever come into the hands of the Germans”, nothing about sailing for British ports. Ironically the time that he did call on the French Navy to defect was after the Allied landings in French North Africa when the Allies recognized him as the head of the French North African colonies and he ordered all French forces in North Africa to cease resistance to and join the Allies on November 10, 1942. On the 12th he called upon the French fleet at Toulon to defect and sail for North Africa. > [@](#): > > 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. As I said, it is perhaps understandable for Churchill to feel he couldn’t risk the French fleet falling into German hands, but it was even more understandable that the French fleet would reject an ultimatum. With the advantage of hindsight the possession of the French fleet would have been of questionable value anyway. Hitler wasn’t interested in more than neutralizing them, and even if they had been seized, who was going to man them? Darlan’s word was kept when Hitler tried to ‘simply seize them’ at Toulon. The Germans were only able to seized three disarmed destroyers and four badly damaged submarines; the rest of the French fleet, 3 battleships, 7 cruisers, 15 destroyers, 13 torpedo boats, 6 sloops, 12 submarines, 9 patrol boats, 19 auxiliary ships, 1 school ship, 28 tugs and 4 cranes were all scuttled before or while the Germans could seize them. There’s a good account of the scuttling [here](http://www.battleships-cruisers.co.uk/toulon.htm), including this amusing bit: > [@](#): > > The battleship Provence, 22,000 ton sister ship to Bretagne and Lorraine, was almost lost to the enemy by the doddering indecision of her captain who was confused by a message : “Orders have been received from Monsieur Laval that all incidents are to be avoided.” With other ships listing, exploding, settling and capsizing all over the place the captain thought he should follow suit although he was surrounded by armed Germans on his ship. He stalled for time by sending an officer across the yard to find out what the order actually meant, at the same time as his crew were pulling out the plugs. The captain and the Germans were still arguing and waiting for the officer to return when the old battleship slowly listed under their feet. The captain was led ashore smiling. ETA: Nothing other than Churchill’s decision to present the French fleet with an ultimatum made hostilities with Vichy inevitable, as evidenced by the fact that the only hostilities with the French fleet in Vichy hands occured at the instigation of the Allies, not due to Britain blockading the continent. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2013, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-france-anti-semitic-to-the-core/671277/22 "2013-10-17T20:05:39Z")
What! Oliver Stone said something stupid!? I’m shocked! Shocked! ---
**Author:** ![pdunderhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4bbf92/32.png) [@pdunderhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pdunderhill)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-france-anti-semitic-to-the-core/671277/23 "2013-10-18T11:24:53Z")
As a curious aside, when the Soviet troops finally occupied Hitler’s bunker in May '45 the last troops left defending were a group of French volunteer SS troops, perfidious Albion my arse. P ---
**Author:** ![Sandwich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/22d042/32.png) [@Sandwich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sandwich)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-france-anti-semitic-to-the-core/671277/24 "2013-10-18T12:23:20Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > … yet every European nation provided thousands of volunteers to join the _Waffen-SS_. Is this actually true? I had in mind that British \*willing \*volunteers were in the very low hundreds, and that Irish volunteers were only just in double figures? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-france-anti-semitic-to-the-core/671277/25 "2013-10-18T15:46:46Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > 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). Croatia is an obvious example. Hungary was a very enthusiastic puppet after the Arrow Cross took over, cheerily shipping the Jews away to Auschwitz. You can’t really get any more cooperative than Austria, can you? It’s rather easy to provide examples of European countries who were enthusiastically fascist. ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-france-anti-semitic-to-the-core/671277/26 "2013-10-18T16:45:55Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > 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. > . I don’t want to get into this, as I’m sick of interest in nazis — except to say that the French ( who fought valiantly against the invasion, as valiantly as they had frequently invaded everyone else ) are being unfairly singled out; but an amusing sidenote I recently noticed when reading Dr. Evans on the 1870 war was that one officer POW was well-trusted to administer funds: this was Col. du Paty de Clam. This is unlikely to be Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Armand Auguste Ferdinand Mercier du Paty de Clam, persecutor of Dreyfus, unless he was colonel at 17, ( 1853 - 1916 ) but the latter’s son became Commissioner General for Jewish Affairs in the Vichy Government… ‘_Doing the old man proud_’, as we would say in this country. To be fair the Paty de Clams, being a distinguished family, appear to serve all the regimes since the monarchy with equal loyalty. To suggest they were ‘right-wing’ would only apply in time and place: I am sure that had the communists taken France they would have become colonels in the Soviet Armee Francais eventually. Very few aristocratic families anywhere remain true, but instead pursue their family interests with zeal — which applies to non-aristos such as an avarious butcher like Soult, who was instantly loyal to any replacement on demand, but aristocrats find it easier to betray. Armand — **[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_du_Paty_de_Clam)** The Commissioner - **[TIME](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,932388,00.html)** ( requires log-in ) A Clampett Family document on the **[Paty de Clams](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=20&cad=rja&ved=0CIUBEBYwEw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clampett.net%2Fstory%2Fdu_paty_de_clam%2Fdu_paty_de_clam.doc&ei=o1xhUqb2LorW0QXPy4GQDg&usg=AFQjCNEIEga3m1NWs-HDGfm_v7_tc2eYaw&sig2=EU5cBNYE52EiP_e5Iv5PVg)** ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-france-anti-semitic-to-the-core/671277/27 "2013-10-18T16:47:07Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > 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**). The main reasons that many Jewish Germans were practicing Christians at that time was that, for quiet a few generations, there had been strong social and economic pressures on Jews to convert. In many areas it was next to impossible to advance your career very far if you were a practicing Jew, and converting yourself and your family to Christianity was the only way to open up the path to advancement. This is hardly evidence that pre-Nazi German society was not anti-semitic. By modern standards it was extremely, and very openly, anti-semitic. It wasn’t as bad as it was in some other countries, perhaps, and certainly it wasn’t nearly as bad as it became under the Nazis, but is that saying very much? ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-france-anti-semitic-to-the-core/671277/28 "2013-10-18T16:54:50Z")
> [@Sandwich](#): > > Is this actually true? I had in mind that British \*willing \*volunteers were in the very low hundreds, and that Irish volunteers were only just in double figures? [Examples here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffen-SS_foreign_volunteers_and_conscripts), ranges from a few to dozens to thousands, depending. E.g. says UK is 1500+. It says the Estonians and Latvians were conscripts (all of them? What happened to Lithuania?) although I imagine they hated Germany less than the USSR. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-france-anti-semitic-to-the-core/671277/29 "2013-10-18T19:24:47Z")
> [@Sandwich](#): > > Is this actually true? I had in mind that British \*willing \*volunteers were in the very low hundreds, and that Irish volunteers were only just in double figures? You’re high even on those figures; but Britain and Ireland were never occupied by Germany, which is what **tomndebb** was presumably referring to. The [British Free Corps](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Free_Corps) only had 59 members in total, some only for a few days, and its peak strength was 27. The Irish figures from [Friesack Camp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friesack_Camp) did only just reach double digits at 10, but that includes Cromwell O’Neill, a civilian who had been captured on an interned freighter who turned himself in to the British when sent by the _Abwehr_ on a mission to spy in Northern Ireland, so you could make the case that the figure was really only 9. > [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > [Examples here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffen-SS_foreign_volunteers_and_conscripts), ranges from a few to dozens to thousands, depending. E.g. says UK is 1500+. It says the Estonians and Latvians were conscripts (all of them? What happened to Lithuania?) although I imagine they hated Germany less than the USSR. Those figures are simply wrong. In the footnote for those figures it notes: > [@](#): > > Robert A. Best in his book from 2010 The British Free Corps: The Story of the British Volunteers of the Waffen SS (ISBN 978-1904911906), lists the names of 165 BFC members, with their fates (where known). He also quotes a source which indicates that by January 1945, some 1,100 Britons had applied to join the formation. Additionally, there was also an SS Irish Brigade, which was about 400 men strong. Whatever his source was for those figures was, it is incorrect. In listing the names of 165 BFC members, he is probably using the figures of those who attended BFC recruitment drives at camps for British POWs. Some of those didn’t have the interest to actually sign up after attending the meetings, and some had been ordered to attend by British officers at the camps to see what exactly the Germans were up to. Regarding the Baltic States, again the statement from the article that > [@](#): > > Soldiers from Estonia and Latvia were not volunteers[5] but conscripts which the German authorities had denied their wish to form national military units allied to Germany. is simply wrong; some were volunteers and some were conscripts. See for example the [3rd Estonian SS Volunteer Brigade](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3rd_Estonian_SS_Volunteer_Brigade) which was formed from volunteers which was later used as the core in forming the [20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian)](20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian)) which _did_ include conscripts. Just as a note on the SS and foreign units and soldiers who either volunteered on were conscripted into it, by the end of the war Himmler was able to get almost all foreign units serving in the German armed forces to be part of the SS rather than the Wehrmacht in order to expand his personal empire in Nazi Germany. The popular image of the SS as ‘Aryan’ tall, blonde haired and blue eyed is true when it was first formed and in the prewar years, but as a result of incorporating all foreign units this was not the case by the end of the war, when the size of the Waffen-SS was nearing a million strong. The SS ironically included large numbers of those considered untermensch by Nazi ideology. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2013, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-france-anti-semitic-to-the-core/671277/30 "2013-10-19T01:37:56Z")
> [@Sandwich](#): > > Is this actually true? I had in mind that British \*willing \*volunteers were in the very low hundreds, and that Irish volunteers were only just in double figures? I probably should have said every occupied country in Europe provided thousands of volunteers. If it would make anyone more comfortable, I will further re-word it to “Thousands of volunteers were recruited from every occupied country in Europe,” so that the numbers of each country do not have to hit a thousand–although I believe that every occupied country did provide at least 1,000 volunteers. Numbers, (that I have not reviewed and cannot defend), may be found on [this Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffen-SS_foreign_volunteers_and_conscripts#List_by_nation_and_unit). ---
**Author:** ![Depakote\_Chopra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/919ad9/32.png) [@Depakote\_Chopra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Depakote_Chopra)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2013, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-france-anti-semitic-to-the-core/671277/31 "2013-10-19T08:59:29Z")
Oy vey ! France is so antisemitic. Fortunately there are _Mensch_ like Dominique Strauss-Kahn to restore France’s honor. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2013, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-france-anti-semitic-to-the-core/671277/32 "2013-10-19T14:59:56Z")
> [@Depakote\_Chopra](#): > > Oy vey ! France is so antisemitic. Fortunately there are _Mensch_ like Dominique Strauss-Kahn to restore France’s honor. That is so entirely off topic I won’t even give a warning. But do it again - or anything like it - and I will. Stay on topic and avoid anything that seems like hate speech, please. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2013, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-france-anti-semitic-to-the-core/671277/33 "2013-10-19T15:15:34Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > That was your first mistake. Oliver Stone is many things, but a reliable narrator of history he is not. > > Who knows? Why does he think the JFK assassination was a conspiracy? Oliver Stone has said that his only mistake with the film JFK was not to put at the very beginning “This is a work of FICTION”. The movie is just a story. As for this documentary, did he make it? Or is just doing the voice over? Did he write it? He says it with such conviction because he is (voice) acting. If you narrate a documentary you say things like; maybe, l don’t know, that’s what I heard. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2013, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-france-anti-semitic-to-the-core/671277/34 "2013-10-19T17:06:45Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > It says the Estonians and Latvians were conscripts (all of them? What happened to Lithuania?) although I imagine they hated Germany less than the USSR. Not all of them. The Estonian and Latvian units had a core of volunteers surrounded by conscripts. In Lithuania, the original attempts to form an SS unit failed because of refusal by the Lithuanians. Eventually, a “Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force” was formed, commanded by Lithuanian officers, that did anti-partisan operations. The Lithuanians also created police battalions that participated in the Holocaust (the Ponary Massacre, the killings in the Ukraine, guarding Majdanek, putting down the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, etc), but there was never a Lithuanian SS unit. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2013, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-france-anti-semitic-to-the-core/671277/35 "2013-10-19T19:07:23Z")
> [@Zebra](#): > > Oliver Stone has said that his only mistake with the film JFK was not to put at the very beginning “This is a work of FICTION”. > > The movie is just a story. It’s hard not to conflate the two what with his film being named JFK and all, but Oliver Stone [believes the JFK assasination was a conspiricy](http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/oliver-stone-defends-jfk-against-conspiracy-of-dunces): > [@](#): > > What he was doing, according to “JFK,” was proposing to emasculate the military-industrial complex, which Eisenhower warned against in his farewell speech in 1960. Stated bluntly, Stone believes Kennedy was killed because his policies were bad for the arms business. > Do you, I asked him, have a personal theory about the assassination? Do you think you know the names of the guilty? > > “I do. My own conclusions go harder and further than the film. I think I pulled back to some degree, because I didn’t have the proof necessary to name names and I can only make a hypothesis, and that’s a very heavy thing to lay on somebody, to accuse them of killing the president. After the film is out there, and the public has had a chance to see it and react to it, I think the discussion could be furthered.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wwii-france-anti-semitic-to-the-core/671277.md?page=1)