Abstract
Fauxbras produced a remarkable document during his time as a prisoner of war in German camps. This chapter explores this text, which provides a unique insight into the debacle of June of 1940. France’s ‘strange defeat’ was the focus of obsessive scrutiny in its immediate aftermath, but it was forgotten amid the redemption of liberation and, since the publication of Marc Bloch’s celebrated examination, has become the subject of historical dissection.1 In the short term and domestically, this traumatic defeat led to fierce recriminations, the search for alibis and villains. A one-sided literature flowed from French publishing houses in the Vichy years. Fauxbras commented on several of these works in his diary.2 Initially, those within the Vichy regime sought political explanations for France’s defeat: it was pacifism, the Third Republic’s democracy, the Popular Front, the Communist Party that led to the loss of nerve and failures of duty amongst the ordinary soldier. Vichy established a tribunal to investigate defeat and tried General Gamelin and Popular Front politicians at Riom opening on 19 February 1942. This sideshow articulated the regime’s ideological explanation of France’s collapse. Indeed, Julian Jackson observed defeat ‘provided Vichy with its moral authority; it was the foundation myth of the regime’.3
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Notes
Julian Jackson, The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940 ( Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003 ), p. 235.
Francis Ambrière, Les Grandes Vacances ( Paris, Seuil, 1956 ), p. 61.
César Fauxbras, Sondage 1940: ou Pourquoi le Soldat Français ne Voulait pas Mourir pour Dantzig ( Paris, Allia, 2011 ), p. 1.
Yves Durand, La Vie Quotidienne des Prisonniers de Guerre dans les Stalags, les Oflags et les Kommandos 1939–1945 ( Paris, Hachette, 1987 ).
Gérard Loiseaux, La Littérature de la Défaite et de la Collaboration ( Paris, La Sorbonne, 1984 ).
Gustave Folcher, Marching to Captivity: The War Diaries of a French Peasant, 1939–45 ( London, Brassey’s, 1996 ).
George L. Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996 ).
George Mosse, ‘Two world wars and the myth of the war experience’, Journal of Contemporary History, 21 (1986), pp. 491–513.
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© 2011 Matt Perry
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Perry, M. (2011). Survey of Defeat 1940. In: Memory of War in France, 1914–45. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230297746_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230297746_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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