On to Paris - Life Magazine, 21 August 1944
Stratum101
in Google Books images of the Life Magazine issue
mentioned in subject line. Life was then calling this
"the Battle of France," that is, the Allied advance across
western France after June 6.
Go here: http://tiny.cc/mHVQX
Stratum101
I don't propose to write it, but as long as we're tearing
across France at breakneck speed, this is a good place
to voice a thought that has long occurred to me.
A new Great World War II Novel (presumably all the
great ones have already been written) would be
something with a title like, "The Trial of Pierre Laval".
Stratum101
My proposed title may require work.
_The Trial of Pierre Laval: Defining Treason,
Collaboration and Patriotism in
World War II France_ exists. In fact, it was
published a few weeks ago. The author is
J. Kenneth Brody. A blurb calls it "a
stunning work".
(Laval was tried in several days in October,
1946, and executed a few days later
in what to Americans who hadn't
experienced four years of occupation
looked like a kangaroo court. Even his
bitterest enemy Charles de Gaulle was
ambivalent about the execution.
Despite what I have heard fellow Americans say
["post-war French mobs were quick to even
old scores"], it is a fact that the Fourth Republic
executed only a few collaborateurs, and spared
the life of Philippe Petain because of his
advanced age and because he had been a
hero of 1914-18.)
Don Phillipson
news:b697c847-c2f1-422d...@g23g2000vbr.googlegroups.com...
Life Magazine usage of 21 Aug. 1944 did not last.
Later historians follow Churchill's coinage of July 1940:
"The Battle of France" usually identifies the German victory
of May-June 1940. But the Life map thus labeled (p.34)
is a cogent summary of both armies' orientation.
The pictures (BW photos from France, coloured drawings
from Pacific islands battles, industrial bearings etc.) remind
us just how brilliant Life Magazine was in those days.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Stratum101
>
I'm to read _The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and
Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation_ by Frederic
Spotts (published Jan., '09) as soon as it arrives. Browsed it
once last spring and it failed to make an impression on me
but the subject has been gnawing at me.
The on-line reviews at Amazon's site are mixed varying
from effusive to crabby. The author is taken to task in
one blurb for missing the year of Andre Gide's Nobel.
(It was 1947, not 1957. Gide would be dead by 1957.)
There ought to be the usual anecdotes that anyone
who's spent time in France will know from constant
repetition in the French press. Edith Piaf withstood public
ridicule while she entertained French POWs because
the Germans ever anxious to portray their prisoners
as happy campers presented them with photographs
with her, which recipients were able to trim for use on
forged documents. (In the occupation zone, it was
illegal to make portrait photographs of French citizens
for exactly this reason.) Maurice Chevalier's
case is more mixed. Samuel Beckett fled south
from Paris to the region north of Marseilles
where he worked with the underground, overlooked
by the Germans because he was from
Ireland, a neutral nation.
It's 40 years ago this year that Marcel Ophuls' 4-hour
film "The Sorrow and the Pity" presented interviews
of ordinary and extraordinary, famous and infamous
people from the region around Clermont-Ferrand near
Vichy where the Germans allowed collaborators
to set up a puppet state. That and Louis Malle's
1980s film, "Au revoir, les enfants" are the only
pieces that I can think of that deal with
the Occupation that were seen by many
Americans. This is extraodinary itself
because so many of the fathers of my generation
were there in the armed services, rerversing the
status quo so to speak and came home
with tales of the Occupation years that
they had learned first hand from the
occupied.
Hundreds of French films and easily
thousands of books have dealt with
the subject but never found much audience
in America. We had other pressing
concerns of course. There was the war
in the Pacific. And it's all so much
ancient history for the generation
come of age since September 11.