Category Archives: war

by | 3 February 2008 · 7:17 pm

Controlling Access to Food and Warmth

From The Unfree French: Life Under the Occupation, by Richard Vinen (Yale U. Press, 2006), pp. 216-217:

Shortages created a new sort of society. German power depended partly on the ability to control access to food and warmth…. People gathered wherever they could conserve energy, keep warm and, perhaps, get food. Cinemas were popular, though young men who might attract unwelcome interest from the Germans increasingly avoided such places. Library membership doubled. Many people simply stayed at home: Colette said that the best way to survive the occupation was to ‘stay in bed’. Bourgeois Parisian families abandoned parts of their apartments to gather in a single heated room. Georges Simenon characteristically saw commercial possibilities opening up as people huddled together on cold, dark nights. He asked Gallimard to produce an advertisement that read: ‘This winter you will reread all the Simenons.’

Urban consumers, especially women and children, spent hours queuing. On 13 December 1940 Liliane Schroeder queued for twenty minutes to buy some Brussels sprouts and then for another half an hour to buy apiece of black pudding. In the provinces, people started queuing at three in the morning; in Paris, some concierges rented out places in their courtyards or doorways during the night-time curfew to those who wished to be the first to queue outside shops in the morning. It could be soul-destroying to wait for hours in the bitterly cold winters of 1940-41 and 1941-2 only to find that there was nothing left in the shop. In 1943 Marcel Ayme published a story entitled ‘En attendant’. It is set during ‘the war of 1939-1977’.

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by | 2 February 2008 · 9:44 am

French Attitudes Toward Their Boche Occupiers

From The Unfree French: Life Under the Occupation, by Richard Vinen (Yale U. Press, 2006), pp. 131-132:

French people tended to think of a German rather than Nazi occupation. Nazism may have dictated overall German policy towards France and it obviously had a dramatic impact on the lives of some people in France, especially Jews, Communists and Resistance activists, but relatively few French people had much contact with specifically Nazi agencies. For most, the quintessential German was a middle-aged corporal in a non-combat unit rather than a Gestapo man. The French often thought about the occupation in terms devised to deal with the First World War. Anciens combattants, and especially men who had been prisoners of war in Germany, sometimes mediated between the Germans and the French. The term ‘boche’, which had come into use during the First World War, was used by French people, even those who supported Vichy or collaboration, to describe the occupiers. The fact that French people did not experience or appreciate the most radical aspects of Nazism does not, however, mean that their experience of the Germans was benign. ‘Boche’ may sound a rather twee term in retrospect, but the Germans repeatedly punished French people who used it. In Brittany, a typist hired by the Germans spent much of her time reading plays to be performed in village halls and crossing out the word ‘boche’.

Public memories of the occupation in France have tended to concentrate on spectacular acts of large-scale violence: the massacre of civilians at Oradour in 1944 or the deportation of Parisian Jews during the summer of 1942. Sometimes attention devoted to such incidents can give the impression that German behaviour towards French people who did not belong to particularly victimized groups was generally ‘correct’ or that French and Germans cohabited with relative amicability. It is true that there were occasions when French and Germans co-operated in the pursuit of simple mutual interest, but it is also true that even in relatively quiet periods the French often experienced the occupation as a time of low-level humiliation and the constant threat of violence.

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by | 27 January 2008 · 9:45 pm

How the Caged Historian Wrote

From The Unfree French: Life Under the Occupation, by Richard Vinen (Yale U. Press, 2006), p. 205:

Books were written in captivity. Fernand Braudel’s thesis on The Mediterranean in the Age of Philip II (which was to revolutionize historiography when it was published) was written in Oflag XIIB in Mayence and then at Oflag XC at Lübeck. Braudel sent chapters, handwritten in school exercise books, to his supervisor Lucien Febvre in Paris. It is interesting to speculate on how captivity marked this work. Was Braudel’s approach influenced by the access to German history books, brought to him from the town library by a sympathetic German guard? Was it the chance to escape from academic routines that turned Braudel away from what had previously been orthodox historical writing? Was Braudel’s determinism and emphasis on the longue durée characteristic of one who was leading a life of enforced passivity controlled by inscrutable forces? Does the vividness with which the material richness of the Mediterranean is evoked owe something to the deprivations of a German winter?

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by | 24 January 2008 · 5:06 pm

Faking Flemish to Freedom, 1941

From The Unfree French: Life Under the Occupation, by Richard Vinen (Yale U. Press, 2006), pp. 192-193:

The complexity of the mechanisms by which men were released [from German captivity], and the extent to which those mechanisms could be manipulated, was illustrated by the release of Flamands in February 1941. In extending the definition of Flamands to those from northern France who spoke Flemish, the Germans created a new category that did not bear any relation to prisoners’ existing bureaucratic status. Men had to prove that they spoke Flemish by appearing in front of a ‘linguistic commission’, which contained a Belgian civilian (presumably one who was politically sympathetic to the Germans) and a German officer. This opened opportunities for enterprising prisoners. Jean Legros, a French speaker from Belgium, was able to learn enough Flemish to pass the test. His brother, who spoke no Flemish, came into the room immediately after him and Legros got his release simply by saying, ‘That is my brother.’ Legros also gave language lessons to prisoners from northern France who hoped to secure their release in the same way. At the other extreme was a Flemish-speaking prisoner from northern France in a work Kommando of Stalag XVIIB in Austria. The prisoner in question was illiterate and spoke poor French. It is easy to see why he had not been repatriated. Isolated in a work Kommando and unable to read circulars or to understand much of what his comrades said, he probably had no means of knowing about the possibility of repatriation.

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by | 22 January 2008 · 5:45 am

The Vichy Milice

From The Unfree French: Life Under the Occupation, by Richard Vinen (Yale U. Press, 2006), pp. 124-125:

Vichy was a neutral government and, except for some confrontations in Algeria, Madagascar and Syria, regular members of the French army did not fight against the Allies during the Second World War. However, some at Vichy did sponsor new agencies, the members of which came to fight alongside the Germans. Some at Vichy also sponsored increasingly vigorous forms of policing, directed especially against the Resistance….

In January 1943 Laval entrusted Darnand with the creation of another body, the Milice. The most important elements of the Milice were the militarized francs gardes, some of which were paid professionals. The Milice marked yet another step away from the Légion, in which Darnand had originated. The Milice, unlike the Legion, explicitly excluded Jews from membership and its members were younger than the legionnaires, having an average age of thirty against the Legion’s average age of fifty. The Milice also drew its recruits from cities to a greater extent than the Legion—the countryside was becoming a dangerous place for anyone likely to be a Resistance target.

The Milice became more and more closely associated with the Germans. Darnand himself was commissioned into the SS in August 1943, and in November of that year the Germans began to give the Milice weapons. This association, however, never meant that Darnand entirely abandoned his anti-German nationalism, and even just before joining the SS he seems to have talked about the possibility of supporting the Free French.

There were about 35,000 miliciens by the liberation, of whom around a quarter were in the francs gardes. Some miliciens, such as Henry Charbonneau or Christian de la Maziere, were upper-class young men driven by anti-Communism and the search for adventure. Increasingly, however, recruits to the Milice had more obviously material motives. Many were young, urban and poor. Some wished to secure exemption from labour service in Germany. Others were attracted by the relatively high salaries paid to full-time miliciens (a member of the francs gardes could earn 2,500 francs per month, at a time when a factory worker earned 1,300 francs) or by the opportunities for pillage. Quite large numbers of miliciens were regarded as suffering from mental instability.

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by | 19 January 2008 · 9:33 am

U.S.–Vichy Relations, 1940–44

From The Unfree French: Life Under the Occupation, by Richard Vinen (Yale U. Press, 2006), pp. 70-71:

The single most important country in Pétainist imagination was the United States. The Rue des États-Unis ran past the Hotel du Parc and, unlike some Vichy streets, it kept its name throughout the period from 1940 to 1944. France’s self-image in the inter-war years had often been defined in contrast to America. Pétainists had often seen Americanization as a threat to French traditions. Pétain’s adviser, Lucien Romier, had published a book in 1927 entitled Who Will Be Master, Europe or America? Yet after 1940 Pétainists knew that America mattered hugely to their country. It was the most important of their diplomatic partners. It mattered, first, as a source of food and then as a potential broker of a compromise peace (a few at Vichy continued to believe in the possibility of such a peace until the summer of 1944).

The American embassy in Vichy was a strange place and became all the more so after Hitler declared war on the United States in December 1941. Men such as ‘Woody’ Wallner, and ‘Doug’ MacArthur II, the nephew of the general, spent their time swimming, playing tennis or drinking cocktails. Wartime Vichy was excruciatingly dull for east coast patricians who had spent most of their career in European capitals. After April 1942, the embassy was run by Pinkney Tuck, the chargé d’affaires. Tuck, a career diplomat, was a conservative and seems to have been anti-Jewish (he opposed American recognition of Israel). However, like many French anti-Semites, Tuck was appalled by evidence of Nazi atrocities against the Jews in the autumn of 1942 and tried to get American visas for Jewish children in France. His efforts were thwarted by the German invasion of the southern zone. By the time the Germans arrived at Vichy, the American embassy contained only a couple of junior officials who had been left behind to shut up shop before being interned in Baden-Baden.

It is probably wrong to look for much ideological coherence in American attitudes to Vichy. The general tone of American policy can be deduced from the code names that Americans used for French affairs: Pétain was ‘Popeye’, Laval was ‘black Peter’ and France in general was ‘the Frog pond’. American policy was mainly directed towards the practical matter of ensuring that French resources were not deployed against the Allies, and bolstering what the Americans took to be anti-German elements at Vichy. To this end, they sent William Leahy, a sixty-four-year-old admiral, to be their ambassador to Vichy. Leahy was a brisk conservative who spoke almost no French and judged men mainly on whether or not they looked their interlocutors in the eye. Leahy’s particular concern was to prevent the remainder of the French fleet from falling into German hands. The Americans also wished to persuade some eminent French figure to establish an anti-German government in French North Africa and, initially, they hoped that Weygand might undertake this task.

Pétain was believed to have had good relations with American soldiers during the First World War and had been well received during an official visit that he made to the United States in 1931. The only interview that Pétain accorded to a foreign newspaper during his time as head of state, scripted by Du Moulin de Labarthète, was given to the New York Times. His admirers believed that his opinions would still be taken seriously in Washington. An important part of Pétainist thinking revolved around the idea that there was a gap between the British and the Americans and that Pétain would be able to exploit this gap. This belief persisted even after the Americans invaded French North Africa. In his 1943 biography of Pétain, René Benjamin recognized that the Marshal faced many problems, but implied that good relations with America might provide him with an escape from some of these: ‘The Marshal thinks of Admiral Leahy.’

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by | 18 January 2008 · 6:17 am

France, 1940: The Exode

From The Unfree French: Life Under the Occupation, by Richard Vinen (Yale U. Press, 2006), pp. 29, 38-40 (reviewed here and here):

The dominant French civilian memories of 1940 did not come directly from contact with either French or German troops but from the large-scale flight of civilians away from the advancing German army. Population movement began in France before the German invasion, as civilians were evacuated from threatened areas on the eastern frontier and as factories were moved with their workforces to parts of France that were seen as safe from attack. Private individuals, especially those wealthy enough to afford hotels or lucky enough to have relations in the country, sometimes moved away from cities because they feared air attack, though many of these people had moved back by May 1940….

The exode was not a time of national unity. In the army, officers and other ranks, regulars and reservists blamed each other for the defeat. A generational struggle began during this period as the middle-aged victors of the First World War blamed the young soldiers who had been defeated in the Second. The veterans of the First World War were to become an important part of Marshal Pétain’s support, while young men were to provide the support for both resistance and radical collaborationism….

Alsace-Lorraine and Belgium were Catholic [perhaps Vinen meant devout, as Alsace was confessionally quite mixed] whilst the south-west of France was anti-clerical. Alsatians and Flamands spoke languages that sounded like German, which aroused suspicion in the paranoid climate of 1940. As early as April many claimed that people from Alsace-Lorraine were celebrating Hitler’s birthday or that refugee trains from the east of France had been decorated with swastikas. The de facto annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany in July made the status of people even more uncertain (though, in the long run, people from Alsace-Lorraine who chose not to return home came to be seen as French patriots). The Belgian king’s surrender made the French suspicious of those of his subjects who had fled to France—though many of those subjects were now violently hostile to their own government.

Looting was widespread. Refugees stole things as they moved through deserted towns. Sections of the French army looted on a grand scale in the abandoned areas of eastern France where they were stationed…. Sometimes looting was recognized as necessary for survival when there were no conventional means of obtaining supplies. In Reims, the municipality summoned a locksmith to open abandoned shops. Sometimes shopkeepers left their properties with the doors open and invited refugees to help themselves. Sometimes the privileged took advantage of their positions: the mayor of the village of Epehy in northern France was found to have hundreds of thousands of francs’ worth of ‘requisitioned property’ in his house. On other occasions crimes were committed by people who had no other means of obtaining food. A large proportion of crimes during this period were committed by housewives and also by adolescents, perhaps those who had lost contact with their families. Courts, both those operated under Vichy and those operated after the liberation, seem to have recognized that crimes committed during the exode often involved otherwise ‘respectable’ people.

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by | 16 December 2007 · 9:09 am

Tessaku Seikatsu: Postwar Delusions

From Life behind Barbed Wire [鉄柵生活 Tessaku Seikatsu]: The World War II Internment Memoirs of a Hawai‘i Issei, by Yasutaro Soga [1873–1957] (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2008), pp. 202, 204-205:

A memorial service for the war dead was sponsored by the Buddhist federation and held at the theater on the night of September 14 [1945]. Rev. Joei Oi began the evening by saying that the service would honor the war dead of both sides, which was commendable. However, in his sermon, Rev. Enryo Shigefuji of Fresno expressed opinions that clearly showed he did not understand the current situation. I was surprised at his ignorance. First he attacked the United States for its unlawful and unjust use of atomic weapons. This was admirable. Then he reported, “Japan was so incensed at the inhumanity of this act that it wiped out the entire American expeditionary force in the Far East in three days and forced the United States to surrender.” Rev. Shigefuji was said to be a highly learned priest, so I wondered what had happened. Outside after the meeting, Mr. Komai, Rafu Shimpo president, and I were so dumbfounded that all we could do was exchange stunned looks. We were so amazed by his remarks that we were practically speechless.

Two days later, I heard a sermon by Rev. Shuntaro Ikezawa of the Christian church in the east classroom. The weather was very bad—rain, hail, even thunder. There were only a few priests and about a dozen people present. As I expected, Rev. Ikezawa had grasped what was happening. In his sermon, “Truth and Love,” he talked about the atomic bomb: “What was wrong was not the invention of atomic energy, but the thinking that led to its use in war. If we use our inventions for good, all human beings benefit. His Highness the Prime Minister said to General MacArthur, ‘You must forget Pearl Harbor and we must forget the atomic bomb.’ These were wise words.” The Reverend then prayed for the birth of a new Japan. I felt what he had to say was well worth listening to. Over the next few days the internees could not stop talking about Rev. Shigefuji’s sermon while Rev. Ikezawa’s was never mentioned. Rev. Shigefuji was praised for expressing his opinions without fear and was regarded as a hero….

Even those who should have known better were misinformed or deluded themselves. Around this time I met an uneducated but admirable young man… One morning in early October, the two of us were taking a walk. I asked if he wished to return to Japan. He answered that, because he was poor, he could not go back and wanted instead to remain in the United States, where many jobs would be available in restaurants. He continued: “Actually, one of my friends advised me to return to Japan with him. I said I would if I had the kind of money he had. He said looks were deceiving; in fact he was penniless and that was why he was returning to Japan. Since Japan had won the war, internees could expect reparations from the United States. Internees who went back now could receive as much as fifty thou- sand dollars. If they returned later, the money might no longer be available. My friend repeated that I should go back with him. I did not know what to say. There are so many such fellows who think Japan has won the war.” And so many of them were greedily waiting to return to Japan.

On October 1 all residents of the sixty-sixth barracks boycotted the Santa Fe Times and suspended their subscriptions.

After Spain withdrew its offer to represent Japanese interests, Switzerland took over the responsibility. The Swiss representatives visited the camp with State Department officials on September 27. Mr. Fischer was among them. They met with General Manager Koba and other camp officers. A report of what had transpired, written in question-and-answer form, was mimeographed both in English and Japanese and circulated to all barracks on October 2. U.S.-Japan relations, the surrender of Japan, and the changed conditions in Japan were outlined in detail. I quietly noted the internees’ responses to the report. Many said that talks between representatives of a small country like Switzerland and State Department officials could only be propaganda. They showed no further interest in the matter. The prevailing attitude toward the report was indifference.

On October 2, the camp population was 2,027, of which 106 were in the hospital and 3 were in the temporary holding cell. Those of us in the “traitors group” estimated that the number of internees who had any real understanding of the war and its aftermath was less than a hundred. Even Nisei who visited their parents in the camp around this time advised them not to worry, because Japan was winning the war. The purpose may have been to bolster the spirits of the internees, but it also seemed to provide fuel for the diehards who refused to accept Japan’s defeat. In the end this sort of thing did more harm than good.

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by | 15 December 2007 · 1:37 pm

Tessaku Seikatsu: Tule Lake Thuggery

From Life behind Barbed Wire [鉄柵生活 Tessaku Seikatsu]: The World War II Internment Memoirs of a Hawai‘i Issei, by Yasutaro Soga [1873–1957] (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2008), pp. 168, 170-171:

A right-wing youth group called Shichisho-kai (literally “Club of Seven Lives”) held its first meeting in the east classroom on the night of December 12 [1944]. I decided to attend. At the meeting, young people seated themselves in groups and roll was taken. Then they all stood up and chanted in unison: “We are the loyal subjects of the Emperor. We are determined to be reborn seven times and serve our country.” After that Rev. Dojun Ochi talked about the great history of Japan, beginning with the Meiji era and going back in time. It was very interesting. The leader of Shichisho-kai was apparently a man from Tule Lake….

A rumor spread that more of these “shaven heads” would be arriving from Tule Lake…. Among the internees at Tule Lake, two groups that were constantly at odds with one another were the pro-Japan or “disloyal” faction and the pro-American or “loyal” faction. Such a division in thinking could be found at any relocation center or camp, but it was especially serious at Tule Lake. The pro-Japan group set up a spy ring to gather information on those who were sympathetic to the United States. They infiltrated various groups, placing certain individuals under surveillance and using gatherings to collect information about their enemies. They selected faction members who were to take direct action against the enemy through extraordinary measures. If this proved unsuccessful, they planned to report the enemy to the Japanese government after the war. Once a person was identified as pro-American, they intimidated him by throwing human feces at his house or even boiled feces at the windows. Families were afraid of what others might think and quickly and quietly cleaned up the mess. In July 1944, after a certain Mr. Hitomi had been murdered, fear among the pro-American internees reached a panic stage. Thirteen families fled to a separate enclosed barracks, leaving everything behind. Some of the soldiers who were asked to retrieve their possessions were said to be in sympathy with the pro-Japan group, because when they went to collect one person’s belongings, they asked, “Where’s the dog’s luggage?”

The internee population of Tule Lake Camp was eighteen thousand in October 1944. There were many families, so the camp resembled a town in Japan. Because there were many young girls at the camp, romances blossomed. This, fanned by an uncertain future, led to rash and impulsive behavior. Forty to fifty babies were born every month. Japanese-language schools were not allowed at relocation centers, but there were seven at Tule Lake, two of which were specifically named First National School and Second National School.

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by | 10 December 2007 · 8:27 pm

Tessaku Seikatsu, 7 November 1944

From Life behind Barbed Wire [鉄柵生活 Tessaku Seikatsu]: The World War II Internment Memoirs of a Hawai‘i Issei, by Yasutaro Soga [1873–1957] (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2008), p. 164:

The U.S. presidential election held on November 7, 1944, attracted worldwide attention. On the eighth, it was confirmed that President Roosevelt had been reelected. It would be his fourth term, an unprecedented feat in American history. We now felt that the United States would take it upon itself to end the war. On the afternoon of November 7, the Buddhist and Shinto federations sponsored a memorial service for soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army and for internees who had died in this camp. It was held at the open-air theater, with the Reverend Kogan Yoshizumi officiating. Rev. Enryo Shigefuji of the Fresno Hongwanji Betsuin Mission suggested in his sermon that internees who had pledged loyalty to the United States and had been paroled were disloyal Japanese. Later he found himself in the same difficult position of being condemned when, ironically, he and his wife secretly applied for parole. Christians wanted to join the service, where they intended to pray for all of the war dead, but Buddhists and Shintoists insisted that only Japanese casualties be recognized, so there was no joint service. Even within our little barbed-wire world there were rigid divisions, strong divisive elements, and opposing views.

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