France may have fallen to Germany in 1940, but at least the French liberals were owned. This is the error that cannot differentiate between evils: ending up equating corrupt liberal or conservative citizens of France with Hitler.
Progressive French values failed France, so traditionalists felt vindicated enough to work with Hitler. Traditional values should not include setting up secret police in free France, but so it was in Vichy. Liberalism should not include making excuses for Stalin, but so it was in the communist party of France.
Here is what we learn:
A temptation for anybody is to learn to hate their local enemies so much that nothing seems as bad as the vindication of those enemies.
That is dangerous because in the case of France, knocked out of World War II by Nazi Germany, the temptation of religious and social conservatives was to think that nothing could be worse than the Third Republic. This endless cycle of politicians chattered about everything and if they had managed to win World War I, they had also gotten France into World War II.
The grinding endless trench warfare gave an entire nation post-traumatic stress disorder. France won the war, ending it with the most powerful military on the planet. Within a decade, the Republic had frittered it all away on scandals, endless government change, and waste. When the Republic fell to Hitler, some felt vindicated. After all, they had warned that “this” would happen. In 1940 France, the political left, the socialists and the progressive element, failed the nation in the test against Nazi Germany. This allowed the Right, which had warned of the problems, not to notice her own complicity.
Thus an anecdote:
In 1940 the temptation to blame these forces for humiliation at the hands of the Germans was irresistible. When Pétain told his fellow-countrymen in his broadcast of 25 June that he too ‘hated the lies which have done you so much damage’, everyone knew that he was not referring to the inadequacy of recent military communiqués but indicting the whole direction in which the Republic had taken French society. Henri Frenay heard a representative voice of support on his way home by train from Lyon to Sainte-Maxime just after the armistice had been signed. It belonged to an old gentleman, a retired officer wearing the rosette of the Légion d’honneur, who told the stranger opposite him in the carriage that ‘what had happened served the French right. According to him, it was all the fault of the Republic, the Jews, the Freemasons, the schoolteachers, the parliamentary deputies.’ Frenay added: ‘I even thought I could tell that, to a certain extent, our defeat secretly pleased the old soldier. Doubtless, in his eyes it confirmed sentiments he had always held.’*
This is a stronger temptation than we might admit. Many of us sit as curmudgeons before our screens knowing that if only “those people” would stop, then the republic could be saved. When those people do not stop, and hard times come, then we are vindicated.
“We told them so!” And now the bill must be paid, the chickens have come home to roost, the rightness of all we have said is known by all. That this might mean control of the nation by Hitler or Stalin is irrelevant. We told our fellow citizens, they ignored us, and now we are vindicated.
This is sick, morally bankrupt, but so it goes.
If Petain practiced this on the right, knowing the decadent left would ruin France, the left does the same. China may have fallen to Mao, but certain members of the left in China felt vindicated. They knew Chiang Kai-shek would ruin everything and if a Cultural Revolution or two was the result. . .
Those are Vichy values: better Hitler than my democratic foe, better Stalin or Mao than those conservatives who are fellow citizens. God forbid that any other republic ever prefer owning their opposite in politics to fending off the demons that exist on both the right and left.
—————————————
*Ousby, Ian. Occupation: the Ordeal of France page 74.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In