Whose side was Marshal Petain on?
Y. Macales
what he was up to. On the one hand, he despised the openly
pro-German Pierre Laval and sacked him, only bringing him
back into his Vichy government when forced to. On the other
hand he supported Vichy persecution of the Jews and acquisced
to their deportation to the death camps.
At his meeting with Hitler in late 1940, Hitler reported how
much Petain agreed with him, and yet the agreement to bring
Vichy France closer to the German war effort (without Vichy
France actually declaring war on Britain) didn't really
seem to find favor in Petain's eyes because he stated afterwards
"it will take 6 months to work out the details and another
6 months to forget it"-(quoted by Churchill in his memoirs).
When Operation Torch began in 1942, Petain called in the
United States representative to Vichy and read out a statement
announcing the breaking of diplomatic relations with the US
because of its "agression" against French-controlled territory,
but those present said that Petain had a smile on his face
like he was saying that the Americans shouldn't take the
whole thing seriously. It is stated that up until the end of
the war, most French citizens believed that Petain and De Gaulle
were secretly working together. Petain made only one visit
to Paris during the German occupation and that was shortly
before D-Day when French opinion had already turned against
Germany and collaboration with her and yet they say that
Petain was warmly greeted by the population there.
In the end, Petain was sentenced to death for treason (commuted
to life imprisonment due to his advanced age). What game
was he playing? Was he trying to placate both sides?
He certainly was no friend of democracy and the Third Republic,
and he had fascistic tendencies, yet he seemed to distance
himself from the most pro-Nazi elements of the Vichy regime,
but, as I said, he went along with the genocidal policies
of the Germans. Any opinions?
--
Ken Young
yaakov_...@hotmail.com (Y. Macales) wrote:
> but, as I said, he went along with the genocidal policies
> of the Germans. Any opinions?
Well I have no idea what he was actually trying to do in WW2, In WW1,
however he was noticed as the best defensive general France had as he
preferred to use material rather than troops. Possibly he was just
trying to keep as many French alive as possible.
I forget when Petain actually joined the army, but at one point there
was a lot of anti-semitic opinion in it. Consider the Dreyfus affair.
Ken Young
ken...@cix.co.uk
Maternity is a matter of fact
Paternity is a matter of opinion
--
Rich Rostrom
>The more I learn about Marshal Petain, the less I understand
>what he was up to.
Petain was a reactionary and extreme, I guess you could say,
nationalist. If he'd been American he would have been
isolationist. He resented and distrusted all foreigners.
He also resented and distrusted liberal (in the European
sense) and democratic institutions. The defeat of France
in 1940 confirmed what he had long thought - that France
had been terribly corrupted and weakened by the influences
of democracy, socialism, and modernism generally.
He distrusted and disliked Britain, and regarded the
Dunkirk evacuation as de facto desertion and betrayal.
France had been defeated, but it was really the fault of
the liberals and radicals who undermined the nation's
strength, and 'perfidious Albion', that had urged France
into a foolish war and then deserted in the hour of crisis.
Perhaps a good analogy to Petain's thought would be Chiang
Kai-shek's famous aphorism that "Japan is a disease of the
skin, the Communists are a disease of the heart." In Petain's
view, the German occupation, however oppressive, was an
external problem, which would go away when the war ended,
and posed no threat to the 'essential' elements of the
French nation. As far as Petain could tell, the Allies had
lost the war, and British intransigence was perpetuating a
lost cause, primarily at France's expense. British attacks
on French forces at Mers-el-Kebir and Dakar gave him no
reason to endorse the Allied cause. The best thing for
France to do was get out of the line of fire, figuratively
speaking, and take no side. Meanwhile he would restore
France's home-family-and-church society.
Of course there was no future for this policy, but Petain
refused to see this and blamed Britain, de Gaulle, Communists
(especially after BARBAROSSA), and of course Jews. In the
short term, the policy seemed to benefit France: it spared
southern France from German occupation, and Petain got some
concessions from Hitler on POWs and so on. And Petain could
hardly change course. Openly turning against Germany would
have sacrificed everything he had achieved, left France
exposed to far more violence, destroyed the 'legitimate'
government and opened the door for Communists, ,and made
France a dependent of the treacherous "Anglo-Saxons".
All this happened anyway in 1942, but there was no chance
that someone like Petain would ever move in that direction.
--
Never consume legumes before transacting whatsoever | Rich Rostrom
even in the outermost courtyard of a descendant of |
Timur the Terrible. | rrostrom@dummy
--- Avram Davidson, _Dr. Bhumbo Singh_ | 21stcentury.net
--
Louis Capdeboscq
> In WW1,
> however he was noticed as the best defensive general France had as he
> preferred to use material rather than troops.
That also made him one of the best (if not the best) offensive French
generals, too. He was promoted remarkably fast due to offensive
successes until he won defensive fame at Verdun. Then he launched a few
well-planned offensives after the 1917 mutinies and of course the 1918 ones.
He was a very able WWI commander.
De Gaulle said that Pétain was a great military leader who died in 1924.
> Possibly he was just
> trying to keep as many French alive as possible.
That was a big part of it, yes.
> I forget when Petain actually joined the army, but at one point there
> was a lot of anti-semitic opinion in it. Consider the Dreyfus affair.
No.
Pétain was due for retirement in 1914, so he was already fairly old at
the time of the Dreyfus affair.
He was always an anti-Republican reactionary, which earned him very low
promotion until he got the occasion to prove his worth in WWI.
Louis
--
Remove "e" from address to reply
--
Lech K. Lesiak
> back into his Vichy government when forced to. On the other
> hand he supported Vichy persecution of the Jews and acquisced
> to their deportation to the death camps.
I'm not sure he did that. As I understand it, France handed Jews who were
not French citizens over to the Germans. This is essentially the same
thing as what Canada and the US did when they wouldn't accept Jewish
refugees.
As for agreeing to their deportation to death camps, I doubt he did that
since the death camps didn't get going until 1942 by which time France was
under total German control.
My take on Petain is that he was French patriot who did what he thought
was best for France. I'm not sure he was wrong.
It's easy to condemn him now since he ended up on the losing side. At the
time, matters where not so clearcut.
Cheers,
Lech
--
Andrew Clark
"Lech K. Lesiak" <lkle...@calcna.ab.ca> wrote
> I'm not sure he did that. As I understand it, France
handed Jews who were
> not French citizens over to the Germans. This is
essentially the same
> thing as what Canada and the US did when they wouldn't
accept Jewish
> refugees.
Incorrect.
The Vichy administration began the persecution of Jews
without German prompting. The "Statut des Juifs" (Law of the
Jews) passed in October 1940 mirrored the Nuremberg Laws in
Germany by excluding French Jews from public life, requiring
their dismissal from positions in the civil service, the
army, commerce, and industry, and barring them from
participation in the professions (including medicine, law,
and teaching). In June 1941 a further statute was passed
governing Jewish property, and in July 1941, Vichy began
what it termed "Aryanization," involving the confiscation of
Jewish-owned property for the French state.
About 180,000 mainly non-French Jews were arrested by the
French police and confined in internment camps, such as
Gurs, Saint-Cyprien, Rivesaltes, Le Vernet, and Les Milles.
At Vichy request, over-crowding at Gurs was relieved by the
dispatch of 4000 Jews to Auschwitz, where all were murdered.
In November 1941, Rosenberg, as leader of a "Special Staff
for Cultural Treasures" asked Hitler for permission to seize
the possessions of French Jews in France, and Hitler agreed.
Although it was outside his formal remit, Rosenberg also
asked that prominent Jewish Frenchmen should be arrested and
held as hostages, to be executed in reprisal for any
resistance activities in France. This also was agreed.
In December 1941, the military (Heer) commander in France,
General Stuelpnagel, sought permission from Hitler for a
reprisal action (in breach of international conventions)
following an assassination attempt on a German soldier.
Stuelpnagle asked for permission to shoot 100 of his newly
secured French Jewish hostages, impose a million-franc fine
on the French Jews, and deport 1,000 Jews to Auschwitz.
Hitler
approved these measures on 10 December, and on 12 December
over 5000 Jews were arrested in Paris and interned in a camp
in Compiegne.
Following the Wannsee conference in January 1942, Eichmann
then raised the stakes and asked the German Foreign Office
to obtain Vichy permission to deport 10,000 Jews. Vichy
agreed in February, and with enthusiastic support from
French police and fascist militia, around 80,000 Jews were
arrested and confined in camps and temporary transit prisons
around France. About half were French citizens, 8000 were
children. The majority of Jews, however, escaped the sweep
by fleeing to Spain or the Italian-occupied SE of France,
where the Italian Army refused to hand over any Jew.
The captives were then shipped to the Drancy transit camp
near Paris from where they were shipped to Auschwitz. The
first train, carrying 1,012 Jews, left Drancy on 27 March
1942 and the last on 5 August 1944. 77,000 Jews from France
were murdered in Auschwitz, about 23,000 of them French
citizens.
So much for "France handed Jews who were not French citizens
over to the Germans".
> As for agreeing to their deportation to death
> camps, I doubt he did that since the death
> camps didn't get going until 1942 by which time France was
> under total German control.
Incorrect. Auschwitz I was opened in 1940. Auschwitz II, or
Birkenau, opened March 1941. The first gassing using Zyklon
B gas took place at Auschwitz I on 3 September 1941. The
large gas chambers at Auschwitz II were then built ready for
the mass transports of Jews who arrived in 1942/43.
> My take on Petain is that he was French patriot
> who did what he thought was best for France.
> I'm not sure he was wrong.
I have over 77,000 reasons to disagree with you.
> It's easy to condemn him now since he ended up
> on the losing side. At the time, matters where
> not so clearcut.
It's easy to condemn anyone who is complicit in 77,000+
racist murders.
--
Rich Rostrom
>As I understand it, France handed Jews who were
>not French citizens over to the Germans. This is essentially the same
>thing as what Canada and the US did when they wouldn't accept Jewish
>refugees.
Not at all. The Vichy regime took an active role in locating and
delivering to the Germans tens of thousands of Jews, Many whom had
been living in France as permanent legal residents for years.
In this matter, Vichy France's record is actually worse than that
of Fascist Italy: Petain's henchmen were very enthusiastic about
tracking down Jews and handing them over, whereas Mussolini urged
his subordinates to drag their feet.
>As for agreeing to their deportation to death camps, I doubt he did that
>since the death camps didn't get going until 1942 by which time France was
>under total German control.
The 'non-death' concentration camps were deadly enough; and in
any case the full-scale Endlosung began in early 1942. The Vichy
zone was not occupied till November.
Cub Driver
>As I understand it, France handed Jews who were
>not French citizens over to the Germans. This is essentially the same
>thing as what Canada and the US did when they wouldn't accept Jewish
>refugees.
It's not the same thing at all!
The "same thing" would have entailed rounding up and deporting
non-citizen Jews to Germany.
When the Moral Equivalency police are finished, there is no difference
between being a prisoner in the camps and being a guard. They were
both victims of the system, nichts?
Let us try to maintain a few distinctions. It is one thing to say that
Americans and Canadians might have behaved no differently in the same
situation, and quite another to say that they did behave no
differently in a different situation.
all the best -- Dan Ford
email: cubd...@operamail.com
see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com
--
Lech K. Lesiak
> When the Moral Equivalency police are finished, there is no difference
> between being a prisoner in the camps and being a guard. They were
> both victims of the system, nichts?
As someone who was born in Poland in 1944 I think I have a pretty good
idea of the nature of the Nazi regime.
I'm certainly not arguing moral equivlancy. I'm arguing that matters are
more complicated than posters to this NG often portray.
Cheers,
Lech
--
Lech K. Lesiak
> Not at all. The Vichy regime took an active role in locating and
> delivering to the Germans tens of thousands of Jews, Many whom had
> been living in France as permanent legal residents for years.
As I stated in my original post, they weren't French citizens.
> The 'non-death' concentration camps were deadly enough; and in
> any case the full-scale Endlosung began in early 1942. The Vichy
> zone was not occupied till November.
And do you think the French authorities were aware of developments in
Germany and Poland? The gathering at Wannsee where Heydrich revealed the
plan to German officialdom was in Feb/42. I doubt that full-scale
operations could be said to begin in early 42.
Cheers,
Lech
--
Lech K. Lesiak
> It's easy to condemn anyone who is complicit in 77,000+
> racist murders.
I have no difficulty in condemning Petain as well. His regime did some
pretty nasty things.
But so did others, including the allies.
Eg. the so-called Rhine Meadow Camps, handing over of Soviet citizens by
the allies to the loving arms of Uncle Joe, deportation to Siberia of over
a million Polish citizens by the Sovs, internment of Japanese in the US
and Canada, mass slaughters of ethnic Germans during the post-war
expulsions.
War is a nasty business, and all sorts of innocents suffer due to actions
or inaction of others.
Cheers,
Lech
--
Dave Gower
"Lech K. Lesiak" <lkle...@calcna.ab.ca> wrote
> But so did others, including the allies. Eg. ..., internment of Japanese
in the US
> and Canada
The Canadian interments of Japanese are certainly one of the more
unfortunate actions by a panicky and over-jealous war government, but to
mention them in the same paragraph as the Holocaust and Stalin's mass
murders is outrageous and factually ludicrous.
The internees were shipped to liveable if not luxurious accommodations. They
were given adequate food and other care.
Families were kept together. Their supervision was initially strict but
certainly not SS-like. There was none of the savage abuse and mass murder
seen in Europe. Before the end of the war, most had been freed and able to
take regular jobs or enlist in the military.
I think you owe a retraction and an apology.
--
Louis Capdeboscq
> As I understand it, France handed Jews who were
> not French citizens over to the Germans. This is essentially the same
> thing as what Canada and the US did when they wouldn't accept Jewish
> refugees.
1. Not accepting Jewish refugees is bad, but not as bad as actually
delivering Jews to the Germans.
2. Under Petain, France retroactively cancelled the naturalization of
various Jews. So it is somewhat disingenuous to say that Vichy only
handed "Jews who were not French citizens" after Vichy had changed the
definition of who was and who wasn't a French citizen in the first place.
3. As far as I can tell, Vichy France also delivered some French Jews.
The bulk of the Jews was NOT delivered - fortunately - but it's far from
clear that Vichy official opposition, as opposed to individual acts of
passive resistance, was responsible for that. All the anecdotes that I
know of rather point toward individuals protecting Jews from the
authorities than the other way around.
> As for agreeing to their deportation to death camps, I doubt he did that
> since the death camps didn't get going until 1942 by which time France was
> under total German control.
Vichy created a status of the Jews without being asked by the Germans.
Vichy retroactively un-naturalized some of the French Jews (including
children born in France).
Vichy delivered some political opponents of nazism (Jews and non-Jews)
who had fled to France.
According to the postwar accounts, Vichy only did that when pressured at
gunpoint. In fact, the chronology clearly shows that Vichy preempted
German wishes before they were expressed, let alone pressed. The Vichy
French "worked toward the Fuehrer" just like the Germans had.
> My take on Petain is that he was French patriot who did what he thought
> was best for France. I'm not sure he was wrong.
He was a French patriot who did what he thought was best for France,
that much is clear.
It's also clear that he was wrong.
> It's easy to condemn him now since he ended up on the losing side. At the
> time, matters where not so clearcut.
It depends when. In 1940, they weren't all that clearcut. But very soon,
say 1941 and later, it was clear that the Germans were the bad guys.
Petain remained popular because the opinion believed that he wasn't
associated with the bulk of the Vichy decisions, a bit like Stalin's
popularity in the Soviet Union and Hitler's in Germany.
Louis Capdeboscq
> The more I learn about Marshal Petain, the less I understand
> what he was up to.
Saving France.
Of course his assessment of what France needed saving from was not
shared by everybody.
> On the one hand, he despised the openly
> pro-German Pierre Laval and sacked him, only bringing him
> back into his Vichy government when forced to. On the other
> hand he supported Vichy persecution of the Jews and acquisced
> to their deportation to the death camps.
What this means is that Petain was an anti-democratic, anti-republican
anti-semite reactionary. Laval wasn't a reactionary, but he wanted
collaboration with Germany, and Petain didn't want that.
So there's no contradiction. You have to understand that for most
countries involved, the war was not a pure bipolar event pitting the
forces of good vs the forces of evil. For most of those caught in the
middle, e.g. Vichy France, Finland, Turkey, Sweden, Switzerland, the
question of "whose side are you on ?" could usually be answered by "mine".
> At his meeting with Hitler in late 1940, Hitler reported how
> much Petain agreed with him, and yet the agreement to bring
> Vichy France closer to the German war effort (without Vichy
> France actually declaring war on Britain) didn't really
> seem to find favor in Petain's eyes because he stated afterwards
> "it will take 6 months to work out the details and another
> 6 months to forget it"-(quoted by Churchill in his memoirs).
Basically, Petain was not adverse to collaboration, and he was the one
who pushed that line - however much he tried to deny it afterward.
On the other hand there was a basic misunderstanding about what
collaboration would amount to. For Petain it was a means to get better
armistice conditions, e.g. a reduction of the occupation costs, return
of some (hopefully most or all) of the POWs, evacuation of the occupied
zone, etc. For the Germans, it was a means of enlisting Vichy's help, if
possible as a belligerent.
So the basic misunderstanding - as far as Petain was concerned, of
course, Laval's position was different - was that for the French
"collaboration" was a way to withdraw further from the war but from the
German point of view it was a way to involve France in the war further.
Add to it the fact that the Germans weren't all that interested in
collaboration, as opposed to simple demands and threats, and you have
more or less the story of Vichy. Progressively, Vichy became a
pro-German Axis vassal, up to the point when after Torch the French
fleet based in Toulon wanted to sail and engage Allied navies off North
Africa (at least its senior leadership wanted that, the rank and file
wanted to sail and JOIN the Allies). After the German invasion of Vichy
France, the French in Toulon had explicit orders to maintain their
"neutrality" in a small enclave, by shooting on any "unidentified" plane
except if it was German !
> When Operation Torch began in 1942, Petain called in the
> United States representative to Vichy and read out a statement
> announcing the breaking of diplomatic relations with the US
> because of its "agression" against French-controlled territory,
> but those present said that Petain had a smile on his face
> like he was saying that the Americans shouldn't take the
> whole thing seriously.
Lots of people thought that. Petain had a lot of charisma, and it's easy
to read twinkles in an old man's eyes when the reality is that the great
man was falling asleep in the middle of meetings for short naps.
Petain was asked to fly to North Africa by the most Allied-supportive of
his advisers. He refused, some say that this was because he had always
feared / detested flying. It is clear that if Petain had landed in North
Africa, De Gaulle would have been instantly swept away. Anyway, he
didn't go, he stayed and he ordered his forces to shoot at the Allies.
The problem with Vichy is that the attitude of "look what we're forced
to do, we really have no choice" was so widespread and the implications
of "I'm not really thinking what I seem to be" present at so many levels
(because the exact same attitude could be construed as both a secret
longing for resistance and a secret longing for collaboration) that
there was entirely too much double-dealing, double-speech,
double-meaning for easy interpretation. The reality is that after a
while nobody really knew where everybody stood. The fact is therefore
what people actually said or did, and here the verdict is clear: those
in leadership positions, particularly in the armed forces, usually
collaborated.
> It is stated that up until the end of
> the war, most French citizens believed that Petain and De Gaulle
> were secretly working together.
And even after the war.
That came from a desire to reconcile two tremendously popular characters.
It was totally false, of course. De Gaulle clearly said - numerous
times, including in his memoirs - that he thought Petain amounted to a
German puppet. Petain would most likely have had De Gaulle shot if he
could have caught him.
> Petain made only one visit
> to Paris during the German occupation and that was shortly
> before D-Day when French opinion had already turned against
> Germany and collaboration with her and yet they say that
> Petain was warmly greeted by the population there.
Yes, even after Vichy had been thoroughly discredited, Petain remained
very popular.
That's one of the reasons why De Gaulle spared his life.
The French remembered Petain as a hero (he had been the object of
constant veneration between 1916 and 1944), they liked the father figure
and the "I won't abandon you, but will remain with you and share your
fate", Petain was popular.
> In the end, Petain was sentenced to death for treason (commuted
> to life imprisonment due to his advanced age). What game
> was he playing? Was he trying to placate both sides?
It's hard to tell exactly what game he was playing, because he wasn't
always playing the same game.
There were lots of people who supported Vichy, and they were not the
same people in 1940 and 1944. So Vichy was playing a different game then.
Some things which it is pretty clear that Petain believed and/or wanted:
1. France must not go to war again, on any side.
2. France lost 1940 because of a/ moral rot, and b/ the British. So the
priority is a sort of regeneration of national spirit through the
"Revolution Nationale", emphasizing agriculture, traditional family
values, the end of parliamentary democracy, etc.
Politically, you could say that Petain was close to someone like Franco
except that he liked the Americans more than he liked the Germans. Had
he got his wishes, France would have become a sort of franquist neutral
dictatorship. Of course - and that's one of the things which make Petain
in particular and many Vichy figures in general hard to read - he didn't
get his wishes so it's not always easy to guess what he really wanted.
> He certainly was no friend of democracy and the Third Republic,
> and he had fascistic tendencies, yet he seemed to distance
> himself from the most pro-Nazi elements of the Vichy regime,
> but, as I said, he went along with the genocidal policies
> of the Germans.
He was no fascist, he didn't like that sort of revolution.
He didn't associate himself with genocidal policies, his was more the
"traditional" antisemitism.
a425couple
> On 21 Dec 2003, Andrew Clark wrote:
> > It's easy to condemn anyone who is complicit in 77,000+
> > racist murders.
>
> But so did others, including the allies.
> or inaction of others.
Yes, war is nasty, and all sorts of innocents suffer,
But I am appalled that you include in your list, and compare
with terrible deaths the internment of Japanese in the US.
This was a mistake of war, and an abuse of human rights,
that our government has recognized, and tried to
make right. But it should not be used by you in the same
sentence with massive deaths.
The US did intern about 110,000 Japanese.
The death rate for these interned, from ages 1 to 75,
was no different from that of the American population
at large. Disease statistics were similar. The US
government has apoligized and made retitution,
averaging $20,000 to any Japanese of any age,
of any nationality, who had to spend as little as one
day of the war interned on American soil.
A bad mistake, but nothing like you compare.
I will not argue on about this. If you are honest
and honorable, you should retract this statement.
--