Samizdat regularly publishes deciphering the best podcasts of the Glagolev FM radio. Today we, together with the author of the Blue Marchate Podcast, Yegor Sennikov, understand why the occupation of France by Nazis is perceived erroneously, Sartre was not at all who it seems today, and why everything is not so unambiguous.
As you know, the artist Pablo Picasso did not leave Paris occupied by the Nazis, he stayed in him with his works, with his studio and everything else. His figure aroused great interest among the Germans so soon in Paris, many of whom were admirers of his art.
There is such a story. Once, the Wehrmacht's interested officers came to his studio and went to inspect his paintings. At some point, one of them saw a sketch of the picture “Gertino” Pablo Pick and asked Picasso whether it was his picture. He said this: "Did you do it?" Picasso said, thinking: "No, you did it." But, unfortunately, in occupied France, such an attitude towards the Germans could afford, probably only he and a few more people. Otherwise, the fate of intellectuals under the Nazi occupation left much to be desired.
Many of us have a dual attitude to the history of the occupation of France. We present this period as a struggle of two opposites: collaborators who collaborated with the Nazis, and people who have become members of resistance. In fact, the story is much more complicated, and such a dichotomous attitude towards it is more characteristic of early researchers, and the roots of all this go much deeper-back in the 30s and 20s.
It is interesting that only two weeks after signing a truce with Nazi Germany, July 10, 1940, the French National Assembly proclaimed an actually a new constitution and announced that a great national revolution had occurred. The power of the Vishist France was transferred to Field Marshal Peten, who proclaimed himself the leader of this fragment of the Third French Republic. And we must understand that this revolution was indeed a revolution, since it tried to break with the republican tradition of France, laid back in the time of the Great French Revolution.
New values were proclaimed: rejection of republicanism, rejection of parliamentarism and proclaiming the idea of the need to maintain the concept of a conservative nation, conservatism in relations in the family, in religion and in relations with the state. In general, these four years under the rule of the Nazis are called differently, and often some historians even say that it is more correct to call the French-French war or civil war. This is an important point, because in history it is often not necessary to relate to events unambiguously, to consider that there is only black and white - this is wrong. Often, drawing a hard border between the collaboration and resistance is very difficult, and now many come to the fact that these phenomena - they are more blurred. There are many different details. In the 1930s, in France, a cold civil war was raging-the confrontation between left and right. The left, focusing on the Soviet Union and the ideas of Marxism, strove for greater social justice in France. The right despised the republic, its figures, considered them corrupt, dishonest and deny any value that is important for conservatives and right. This led to various conflicts, including street. The famous performance of the 37th year, when there was an attempt by a coup in France, which was unsuccessful; After that, there was a left government in the country for a long time. So France met the war in such a split state.
In fact, the Nazi occupation not only introduced an external factor with it, something new, but also used the split that were already in society. And it is important to understand that these schisms are not only ideological, but also purely geographical. In the north, the occupying area of Nazi Germany was installed, and in the south there was the so -called free zone, Vichi France. The rules of censorship, the rules of conduct in these two parts of France were different. And before, historians who investigated this phenomenon were inclined to be more correctly tough to divide collaborators and those who opposed them.
The Germans, soon after they came to power, carried out several reforms that cleaned up a large number of people from the French elite. First of all, this was due to their ethnic origin, but in addition, the political component also played a role. Pretty soon, the future members of the resistance, who began to draw up their lists, alternative to Nazi, recording all those who collaborated with the Germans, and in the future it was these lists that played a role in the processes over Nazi assistants answered. But the important point is that this dichotomy itself is not completely true, because a significant number of French intellectuals decided not to participate in this confrontation and emigrated from France. Among them there are a lot of people known to everyone, starting with Henry Mann and ending with Jean Renoir and Claude Levi-Strazs. Most of them left for the United States, in New York, and began to organize something like a confrontation abroad there: to conduct concerts, raise funds, and participate in resistance remotely. And this is what sometimes allowed Greenwich Villij at that moment such a French Parnassus. However, those who stayed had to constantly make a choice and compromise, and it was not always simple. It is important to understand that from the point of view of the members of the resistance, collaborators have always been responsible for their actions, for the articles published by them, for the books they printed, and they were not very worried that the person was forced to compromise.
At the same time, you need to understand that not always those who compromise were ardent Nazis. There is an indicative example of the poet Claudel, who first supported Peten, wrote an ode in honor of him, but in the future, in general, he refused his views. He did not support the Nazis, and Field Marshal Peten caused him real respect. Another story: Jean-Paul Sartre, a French philosopher and writer, who, of course, is known to everyone as, rather, an anti-fascist, the left and obvious opponent of the Nazis, at one time published his first articles and plays in magazines, which then in Paris were considered more cooperating with the Germans. In general, this did not affect his reputation, and no one ever considered Sartre an active collaborator.
An equally important problem is that the north occupied by Germany actually gave opportunities for self -expression more than the south. There were intellectuals who tried to talk about the problems of France. For example, Louis Aragon did this in his verses in which he said that he was mourning about his friends who died in May, and this phrase could be considered such a sad memory of the French who died during the German invasion in May 1940, but in fact, Aragon had in mind the Communists who were shot in 1942, his friends.
This already shows that different relations, various approaches should always take this compromise of the intellectual, forced to somehow adapt to new conditions. In Paris, the situation was dual. On the one hand, the French were allowed to leave a lot from pre -war culture - the Germans even considered French culture degenerative and therefore did not interfere with its spread and life, saying that this would only accelerate the degeneration of the French people. On the other hand, the problems that could follow some performances in the press, or in literature, music, cinema, and so on, could entail much more sad consequences, not excluding concentrations, death, execution and other extreme measures.
A characteristic example that is important in this regard, maybe the history of French cinema. Before the war, France was one of the leaders of the world cinema, shot a huge number of paintings and had a very powerful film market who, after the war, was forced to come to terms with the fact that his significant share received American cinema. However, before the war, the French film industry was on horseback, and the most interesting thing is that during the war it did not die, but rather even blossomed. The audience of cinemas grew, the cinema was shot, and it was significant that even in the pre-war 1938, about 220 million people went to French cinemas, and in 1941, 300 million cinemas visitors were 300 million. Of course, the film industry, like all other cultural industries, suffered from occupation, primarily due to the fact that the Germans forbade Jews to work, many of them had to emigrate, or hide, or do something else. But in another respect, French cinema of the times of occupation was quite active, even one of the most famous French films, such as the Raven Clos or the Angels of Sin, was shot. The profit grew, and the most interesting thing is that German cinema did not cause much interest among the French, although during the occupation it became much more. The films of the times of occupation were shot as if nothing important had happened to the country, and there was no occupation at all. With rare exceptions, we do not even see streets, we do not see people, we do not see German soldiers, only in very rare films we can see something similar, but most often we don’t see this, while everywhere we see the propaganda of the same national revolution. The focus of attention of many French directors from the times of occupation-motherhood, conservative relations in the family, religion, social order, hierarchy and some correct, morally and conservatively verified foundations. So, for example, it was necessary to survive representatives of the film industry, and the most interesting thing is that many of them quite successfully existed after the end of the occupation.
On the other hand, we can find examples of a fierce collaboration with the Nazis, quite conscious. We are talking about a group of intellectuals, among which it is necessary to highlight Lucien Rebate, Braziyak, Drieo La Rochel, who were outrageous of calm in pre -war France. For example, Drieo La Rochelle, a writer, was known that he was like a panka who denied any literary guidelines, wrote in a rather rude form about how the official hierarchy of pre -war French culture annoyed him, and he accepted Nazism, accepted it with a full soul. In addition, he headed the main French literary magazine “New Literary Review”, which began to turn into such a pronounced, Pronemetsky publication.
These same people, primarily Rebate, Braziyak, participated in the creation of JE Suis Partout magazine, which translates “I am everywhere”, which was such an energetic, fierce Nazi leaf. It is interesting that their fate was different, and despite all of them, say, not very correct behavior, it is important that the attitude towards them in post -war France was often connected not so much with whether they cooperated or not, but with what reputation they had among other intellectuals. For example, the rebate after the war experienced serious financial difficulties, had serious problems with work, for almost ten years he fell out of French society, from the French cultural elite, but then he was able to return and worked as a film critic in the journal Cahiers du Cinéma, and such a director as Truffo grew on his articles. It is significant that another participant in the same publication, Braziyak, was not pardoned, but was executed-apparently due to the fact that de Gaulle personally treated him badly, believing that it was Braziyak who was guilty of the death of several of his close friends, whose execution was called by Braziyac during the occupation. Drejo La Rochelle finally committed suicide, although many of his friends, left intellectuals, offered him help, offered him the opportunity to sign up for resistance in the last months of occupation and survive the next years, but he refused and committed suicide.
As we see, often these boundaries between cooperation / not cooperation, and most importantly - the post -war fate of intellectuals are very vague and often depend on how their friends and acquaintances in the intellectual elite relate to these people. And in the end, I must say that France itself is the times of occupation - this is a space where almost any, arbitrarily bizarre, unions were possible. In this regard, the story of such an entrepreneur as Joseph Zhonanovich is very indicative. This man was from the Russian Empire. He was born in Chisinau, was a Jew and back in the 1920s emigrated to France, where he became rich quite quickly, becoming an old-man, collecting and processing garbage. At some point, he was even called the “king of garbage”, and all this was despite the fact that, in fact, Zhonanovich did not even know French, spoke on the strange mixture of Romanian, Yiddish and some excerpts of Russian and French. At the same time, at some point, he acquired influential friends, even in pre-war France he took part in the construction of the Magino line and got rich well on this. When, according to the results of the world with the Germans, Vishist France was covered by a huge amount of reparations, Zhonanovich became an intermediary between German capital and France, helping to actually rob France, earning millions of francs per day. He found good friends in the Gestapo, and even before the war, and actively collaborated with them in various business enterprises. In addition, he also collaborated with resistance - in general, working on both sides. They say that he once drank with his partner from the Gestapo, Henri Lafon, and Lafon told him: “In the end, Joseph, you know that you are just a dirty Jew.” To what Zhoonovich answered very pragmatically by drinking champagne: "How much does it cost to stop being?" Ultimately, he became an honorary Aryan, survived the war, helping French resistance and supplying them with trucks, and spent a huge amount of money. The funny thing is that after the war, in general, nothing terrible happened to him. It was decided to be decided, in the end they sentenced him to five years in prison, he served three years, freed himself. France tried to send him somewhere: first to Romania, then to the USSR, then to Israel-and it never happened. Moreover, Zhonanovich became one of the few people who were refused the right to repatriate in Israel, but in general nothing critical happened, and Zhonanovich himself said in court that he did not have any incredible francs and some incredible profits, although everyone perfectly understood that this was not true. This story is very characteristic of the times of the occupation, and of course, it affects a large extent both the intellectual elite and entrepreneurs. Therefore, to say that France of the times of the occupation was some kind of homogeneous is wrong; Most likely, it is better to talk about a very ambiguous, very blurry time in which there were practically no clear landmarks. Therefore, France and intellectuals in the era of occupation in each case should be considered separately. You always need to look at what exactly the situation was. Listen to other SoundCloud podcasts Leading Egor Sennikov
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