Abstract
This chapter describes how the concepts of divine punishment and decadence have been used to explain the fall of France, from the first days of the disaster to the present day. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church, which in the main supported the Vichy regime, was quick to ascribe France’s collapse to the country’s past sinfulness. But not all Catholics accepted this interpretation, one which did not survive the war. Much more widespread and long-lasting has been the theme of decadence, even though its meanings are multifarious, amorphous and often difficult to grasp.
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Notes
- 1.
James Leutze (ed.) (1972) The London Observer: The Journal of General Raymond E. Lee 1940–1941 (London: Hutchinson) 30 June 1940, 7.
- 2.
Winston S. Churchill (1948) The Second World War Volume 1: The Gathering Storm (London: Cassell), 376–377.
- 3.
W. D. Halls (1995) Politics, Society and Christianity in Vichy France (Oxford: Berg), 39.
- 4.
Corinne Bonafoux (2015) ‘La défaite devant l’opinion catholique 1940–2010’, in Gilles Vergnon and Yves Santamaria (eds.)‚ Le syndrome de 1940: Un trou noir mémoriel? (Paris: Riveneuve), 63–68.
- 5.
On the National Revolution, see, among others, Robert O. Paxton (1972) Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order 1940–1944 (New York: Columbia University Press), 136–233; Marc Olivier Baruch (1996) Le régime de Vichy (Paris: La Découverte), 20–31; and Julian Jackson (2001) France: The Dark Years 1940–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 139–165.
- 6.
Jean-Marie Guillon (1992) ‘La philosophie politique de la Révolution nationale’, in Jean-Pierre Azéma and François Bédarida (eds.)‚ Le régime de Vichy et les Français (Paris: Fayard), 171.
- 7.
Jean-Pierra Azéma and Olivier Wieviorka (1997) Vichy 1940–1944 (Paris: Perrin), 16.
- 8.
Philippe Pétain (1989) Discours aux Français 17 juin 1940–1920 août 1944 (Paris: Albin Michel) 25 June 1940, 66; 13 August 1940, 73; 29 December 1940, 104–105.
- 9.
Debbie Lackerstein (2012) National Regeneration in Vichy France: Ideas and Policies 1930–1944 (Farnham: Ashgate), 61.
- 10.
Patrick Finney (2011) Remembering the Road to World War Two: International History, National Identity, Collective Memory (London: Routledge), 174–175; Pierre Grosser (1999) Pourquoi la 2e Guerre mondiale? (Brussels: Editions Complexe), 193–204.
- 11.
Georges Friedmann (1987) Journal de guerre 1939–1940 (Paris: Gallimard) 14 June 1940, 265–266; 15 June 1940, 271; 22 June 1940, 285; 23 June 1940, 287.
- 12.
Abel Bonnard (1941) Pensées dans l’Action (Paris: Grasset), 43–44, 47, 64–65.
- 13.
Jacques Chardonne (1940) Chronique Privée de l’An 1940 (Paris: Stock), 158, 208–209.
- 14.
Jacques Chardonne and Jean Paulhan (1999) Correspondance (1928–1962) (Paris: Stock), 114–116.
- 15.
Jacques Benoist-Méchin (1941) La Moisson de Quarante: Journal d’un Prisonnier de Guerre (Paris: Albin Michel) 28 June 1940, 50–51.
- 16.
Dr. Paul Rebierre (1941) De la Victoire à la Défaite (Paris: Baudinière), 15–18, 61–63, 117–118.
- 17.
Benoist-Méchin , La Moisson, 25 July 1940, 279–285.
- 18.
Pierre Drieu la Rochelle (1941) Ne Plus Attendre (Notes à leur date) (Paris: Bernard Grasset), 20–26.
- 19.
Robert Belot (2015) Lucien Rebatet: le fascisme comme contre-culture (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes), 251–261.
- 20.
Henri Godard (2011) Céline (Paris: Gallimard), 418–427.
- 21.
Quoted in Geoffrey Warner (1968) Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode), 190.
- 22.
Charles Maurras (1941) La Seule France: Chronique des Jours d’Epreuve (Lyon: Lardanchet), 22–23.
- 23.
Raymond Recouly (1941) Les Causes de Notre Effondrement (Paris: Editions de France), 95–96. A veteran of the First World War, Recouly was a biographer of Foch and Joffre, as well as being a journalist writing from time to time for Gringoire.
- 24.
Pétain , Discours, 10 October 1940, 86–94.
- 25.
Recouly , Les Causes de Notre Effondrement, 1–7.
- 26.
Chardonne , Chronique Privée, 118.
- 27.
Paul Allard (1941) Les Provocateurs de la Guerre (Paris: Editions de France), III–IV.
- 28.
Recouly , Les Causes de Notre Effondrement, 1–6, 82–84.
- 29.
Maurras , La Seule France, 42–43, 47–49, 57.
- 30.
Charles Maurras (1942) De la Colère à la Justice: Réflexions sur un désastre (Geneva: Editions du Milieu du Monde), 41–45, 51. Jean Zay was minister of education in Blum’s government.
- 31.
Paul Allard (1941) Les Responsables du Désastre (Paris: Editions de France), 32–33.
- 32.
Paul Allard (1941) L’Enigme de la Meuse: la Vérité sur l’affaire Corap (Paris: Les Editions de France), I–II, 47–48, 52–55.
- 33.
Léon Blum (1945) For All Mankind (A l’Echelle Humaine) (London: Gollancz), 18–20.
- 34.
Jacques Maritain (1941) France My Country: Through the Disaster (New York: Longmans Green), 2–3, 6–8, 14, 22–24, 26–32, 35–37, 55–56, 70, 92–93.
- 35.
Pierre Cot (1944) Triumph of Treason (Chicago and New York: Ziff Davis), 46, 71–80.
- 36.
Georges Bernanos (1946) Lettres aux Anglais (Paris: Gallimard), 34–35.
- 37.
Thierry Maulnier (1942) La France, la Guerre et la Paix (Lyon: Lardanchet), 89–94, 98–99.
- 38.
André Maurois (1942) I Remember, I Remember (New York: Longmans Green), 287; (1940) Why France Fell (London: John Lane The Bodley Head), 99–100, 150–157, 162.
- 39.
Lackerstein , National Regeneration in Vichy France, 58.
- 40.
Pierre Laborie (2001) L’Opinion française sous Vichy: Les Français et la crise d’identité nationale 1936–1944 (Paris: Seuil), 223–225, 228–231.
- 41.
On French prisoners of war, see for example Richard Vinen (2006) The Unfree French: Life Under the Occupation (London: Penguin); Laurent Quinton (2104) Digérer la Défaite: Récits de captivité des prisonniers de guerre français de la Seconde Guerre mondiale (1940–1953) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes). On French communities abroad, see, for example, Nicholas Atkin (2003) The Forgotten French: Exiles in the British Isles 1940–1944 (Manchester: Manchester University Press); Guy Fritsch-Estrangin (1969) New York entre de Gaulle et Pétain: Les Français aux Etats-Unis de 1940 à 1946 (Paris: La Table Ronde); Colin W. Nettelbeck (1991) Forever French: Exile in the United States 1939–1945 (Oxford: Berg); Albrecht Betz and Stefan Martens (eds.) (2004) Les Intellectuels et l’Occupation 1940–1944: Collaborer, partir, résister (Paris: Autrement); and Emmanuelle Loyer (2005) Paris à New York: Intellectuels et artistes français en exil 1940–1947 (Paris: Bernard Grasset).
- 42.
Jean Guéhenno (2014) Diary of the Dark Years 1940–1944: Collaboration, Resistance and Daily Life in Occupied Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 66.
- 43.
For recent general histories in English of the French Resistance, see Matthew Cobb (2009) The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis (London: Simon & Schuster); Robert Gildea (2015) Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance (London: Faber & Faber); and Olivier Wieviorka (2016) The French Resistance (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Havard University Press).
- 44.
Robert Belot ‘Les Résistants face à la défaite: comment déjouer la tentative de récupération politique du désastre par Vichy?’, in Vergnon and Santamaria , Le syndrome de 1940, 31–49.
- 45.
Georges Boris (1942) French Public Opinion Since the Armistice (London: Oxford University Press), 5–6.
- 46.
Julian Jackson ‘La défaite de 40 vue par le général de Gaulle ’‚ in Vergnon and Santamaria , Le syndrome de 1940, 51–61.
- 47.
Peter Jackson (2006) ‘Post-war Politics and the Historiography of French Strategy and Diplomacy Before the Second World War’, History Compass, 4:5, 871–872.
- 48.
André Beaufre (1967) 1940: The Fall of France (London: Cassell), 212–215.
- 49.
Richard J. Evans (1997) In Defence of History (London: Granta), 157–158.
- 50.
John C. Cairns (1974) ‘A Nation of Shopkeepers in Search of a Suitable France 1919–1940’, American Historical Review, 79, 3; Michael L. Dockrill (1999) British Establishment Perspectives on France 1936–1940 (Basingstoke: Macmillan).
- 51.
Winston S. Churchill (1949) The Second World War Volume 2: Their Finest Hour (London: Cassell), 38–44; David Reynolds (2004) In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (London: Penguin Books), 164–167. On Churchill and the French, see François Delpla (2010) Churchill et les Français: Six hommes dans la tourmente Septembre 1939-Juin 1940 (Paris: François-Xavier de Guibert); Christian Destremau (2017) Churchill et la France (Paris: Perrin/Ministère de la Défense).
- 52.
Robert J. Young (1999) ‘A.J.P. Taylor and the Problem of France’‚ in Gordon Martel (ed.)‚ The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered: A.J.P. Taylor and the Historians (London: Routledge), 75–92.
- 53.
Jackson, ‘Post-war Politics’, History Compass, 876–877.
- 54.
Alistair Horne (1969) To Lose a Battle: France 1940 (London: Macmillan); Willliam L. Shirer (1969) The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Enquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 (New York: Simon & Schuster).
- 55.
Horne, To Lose a Battle, 673–674.
- 56.
John C. Cairns (1974) ‘Some Recent Historians and the “Strange Defeat” of 1940’, Journal of Modern History, 46:1, 81.
- 57.
Jean-Baptiste Duroselle (1979) Politique étrangère de la France: La Décadence 1932–1939 (Paris: Imprimerie nationale).
- 58.
Serge Berstein (1988) La France des années trente (Paris: Arman Colin); Serge Berstein and Pierre Milza (1991) Histoire de la France au XXe siècle II. 1930–1950 (Paris: Armand Colin), 299–305.
- 59.
Laborie , L’opinion française sous Vichy, 205.
- 60.
Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac (1990) Les Français de l’An 40 II: Ouvriers et Soldats (Paris: Gallimard), 709–715.
- 61.
Maurice Agulhon , André Nouschi , and Ralph Schor (1993) La France de 1914 à 1940 (Paris: Editions Nathan Université), 142–149, 268.
- 62.
Olivier Dard (1999) Les années 30: Le choix impossible (Paris: Le Livre de Poche), 239.
- 63.
Jean-Jacques Becker (2005) La France de 1914 à 1940 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France Que sais-je?), 121–123.
- 64.
Eugen Weber (1995) The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s (London: Sinclair-Stevenson), 257–279.
- 65.
Jackson, ‘Post-war Politics’ History Compass, 884.
- 66.
Eric Roussel (2009) Le Naufrage 16 juin 1940 (Paris: Gallimard), 75–76, 242–243, 247–248.
- 67.
Claude Quétel (2010) L’impardonnable défaite 1918–1940 (Paris: JC Lattès), 391–392.
- 68.
David French (2000) Raising Churchill’s Army: The British Army and the War against Germany 1919–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1–2.
- 69.
John B. Wolf (1951) ‘The Elan Vital of France: A Problem of Historical Perspective’, in Samuel M. Osgood (ed.) (1972) The Fall of France 1940: Causes and Responsibilities (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath), 3–17.
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Carswell, R. (2019). Divine Punishment and Decadence. In: The Fall of France in the Second World War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03955-4_5
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