From Enthusiasm to Disenchantment: the French Police and the Vichy Regime, 1940–1944

2002 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Kitson
Keyword(s):  
Political Reform ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Vichy Regime ◽  
Second World ◽  
Police Forces

The French police during the Second World War were used both as a tool of collaboration between the Vichy regime and the Nazi occupier and to enforce an internal political reform, known as the National Revolution. The police initially responded enthusiastically, since an input of new resources was promised and the regime's main opponents – communists and foreigners – were also traditional police targets. A fierce repression ensued, police actions including the handing over of communists to the Nazis and playing an important role in deporting foreign Jews to their deaths. However, after two years police support began to falter, and by mid-1943 many police forces were at collapsing point. The police were suffering from an acute patriotic identity crisis and were the target of Resistance propaganda. The promised new resources had largely failed to materialise, which both demoralised the police and further undermined their efficiency.

scholarly journals Echoes of the Infernal Machine: 1940s French and English Literature of Resistance and Collaboration as a Revolution in the Mythic Imagination

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-246
Author(s):  
Tadd Graham Fernée
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Vichy Regime ◽  
French And English ◽  
Under The Volcano ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World ◽  
Mythic Imagination

This article comparatively examines French and English literature based on two novels published in 1947, Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano and Jean-Louis Curtis’ The Forests of Night. Both novels employ the mythic device to construct narratives on the twilight of the British Empire and the German occupied French Vichy regime, respectively, depicting experiences of resistance and collaboration on the eve of and during the Second World War. Both invent a system of symbolic imagery modelled on the Surrealist template in Jean Cocteau’s The Infernal Machine, that turns the classical mythic device still prevalent in the early 20th century (i.e. in Joyce or Eliot) upside down. The revolution in Mythic Imagination follows the Structuralist Revolution initiated by Durkheim, Saussure and Bachelard, evacuating fixed ontological architecture to portray relational interdependency without essence. These novels pursue overlapping ethical investigations, on “non-interventionism” in Lowry and “fraternity” in Curtis. The novels raise questions about the relation between colonialism and fascism and the impact of non-Western mythic universes (i.e. Hinduism) upon the Mythic Imagination. They have implications for our understanding of gender relations, as well as the value of political activism and progress.

scholarly journals The Internment and Repatriation of the Japanese-French Nationals Resident in New Caledonia, 1941–1946

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rowena Ward
Keyword(s):  
Japanese Population ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
World War ◽  
Vichy Regime ◽  
Japanese Residents ◽  
Second World ◽  
Laws And Regulations

The pre-1941 Japanese population of New Caledonia was decimated by the French administration’s decision to transfer most of the Japanese residents to Australia for internment at the outbreak of the Asia-Pacific theatre of the Second World War. Among the men transferred to Australia were ten men who had been formerly French nationals but had lost their French nationality by decree. The French Administration’s ability to denationalise and intern and then subsequently repatriate the former-Japanese French-nationals was possible due to changes to the French nationality laws and regulations introduced by the Vichy regime. This paper considers the case of the Japanese who had taken French nationality and were denationalised in the context of the changes to the French nationality laws that, in turn, negatively affected the post-1945 sustainability of the Japanese community in New Caledonia.

Possibilities: World War II and Moroccan Jewish Belonging

2020 ◽  
pp. 65-101
Author(s):  
Alma Rachel Heckman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Critical Number ◽  
World War ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Vichy Regime ◽  
Political Choices ◽  
Employment Education ◽  
Second World

Chapter 2 focuses on the Second World War and its effects on Moroccan Jewish and Muslim political life. With France’s fall to Nazi Germany in 1940, the collaborationist Vichy regime applied anti-Semitic legislation in Morocco. While unevenly enforced, such legislation called for severe restrictions on employment, education, and housing for Moroccan Jews. This chapter examines Vichy rule in Morocco and the related spikes in anti-Semitism and fascism. It also describes the efflorescence of political possibilities for Moroccan Jews and Muslims that followed the success of Operation Torch. Yet, the previous fluidity of political choices hardened into mutually exclusive possibilities. Moroccan Jews asked themselves whether it was best to stay in Morocco or to leave. Simultaneously, the chapter charts the transformation of the Moroccan Communist Party into a nationalist organization that included a critical number of politicized Jews.

scholarly journals Vichy France’s Collaboration with Nazi Germany

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-44
Author(s):  
Stephanie Kates
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
The Other ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Internment Camps ◽  
French Government ◽  
The Third ◽  
Vichy Regime ◽  
Second World

During the Second World War in France, a fascist government known as the Vichy Government replaced the Third French Republic. In 1995, the French government publicly admitted that shortly after signing an armistice with Nazi Germany in 1940, the Vichy regime was responsible for implementing racist policies and contributing to the deaths of tens of thousands of people. The purpose of this paper is to begin exploring the extent to which the Vichy Government participated and collaborated in the killings, internment, and discrimination of many thousands of people during the Second World War. The following article focuses on three major aspects of the Vichy Government’s collaboration: anti-Semitic legislation, the internment camps in France, and the roundup at the Vélodrome D’Hiver. The case study of the Vélodrome D'Hiver alongside the other aspects of collaboration are illustrative examples that offer new insights suggesting that Vichy France's government operated as an emphatic collaborator with Nazi Germany rather than simply submitting to or passively assisting this adminstration. The article's thesis advances the notion that this emphatic collaboration was implemented mostly without direction or instruction from the authorities of the Nazi occupying forces. 

The Survival of the Jews in France, 1940-44

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacques Semelin
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Vichy Regime ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Jews In France ◽  
Second World

Between the French defeat in 1940 and liberation in 1944, the Nazis killed almost 80,000 of France's Jews, both French and foreign. Since that time, this tragedy has been well-documented. But there are other stories hidden within it--ones neglected by historians. In fact, 75% of France’s Jews escaped the extermination, while 45% of the Jews of Belgium perished, and in the Netherlands only 20% survived. The Nazis were determined to destroy the Jews across Europe, and the Vichy regime collaborated in their deportation from France. So what is the meaning of this French exception? Jacques Semelin sheds light on this 'French enigma', painting a radically unfamiliar view of occupied France. His is a rich, even-handed portrait of a complex and changing society, one where helping and informing on one's neighbors went hand in hand; and where small gestures of solidarity sat comfortably with anti-Semitism. Without shying away from the horror of the Holocaust's crimes, this seminal work adds a fresh perspective to our history of the Second World War

scholarly journals Unionist vs. Nationalist: Potential Re- emergence of Identity Crisis in Post-Brexit Northern Ireland

WIMAYA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (01) ◽  
pp. 10-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Fernanda Probotrianto
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
Successful Resolution ◽  
Second World

As the world begin to enter another decade of the third millennia, Europe has been struck with various challenges that greatly affects its surrounding geopolitics that, depend on the path further taken, would decide its future: whether maintaining solidarity and regional ‘fraternity’, typically in context of European Union (EU), or towards complete jeopardy and dissolution of the long-lasting union that has been tighten since the end of the Second World War. However, preference of member-states is beginning to drift away to the latter as crisis and problems continue to spring, both internally, such as cases with Greek’s monetary inflation, and externally, concerning massive influx of refugees coming from the Middle East and Africa. As suggested by constructivism, the key of successful resolution depends on the intensity of diplomatic communication. By doing so, both countries should have deep understanding of each other’s perspective. In addition, views and interest of Unionist and Nationalist side should be taken into account for in mitigating possible rise of new conflict.

‘A civic tool of modern times’: politics, mass society and the stadium

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert W. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Spectacle ◽  
The Public ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Mass Society ◽  
Vichy Regime ◽  
Mass Politics ◽  
Second World

This chapter explores how the stadium became central to a mode of political spectacle in France, from the mid-1920s up through the end of the Second World War, at a moment when it was also critical to politics elsewhere in Europe. A range of political luminaries and groups, from the anti-fascist Popular Front coalition to the Vichy regime, promoted stadium-based spectacles as a visible manifestation of political vitality, mass support and masculine citizenship. The stadium gave politicians a vast spectator space that proved ideal for staging political rallies, political plays or religious ceremonies that both aspired to transform spectators into active participants and that entailed efforts to discipline the public. But while the crowd may have been disciplined and mobilized inside the stadium, it also eluded those constraints and often disappointed those politicians seeking to create a unified public. In the years after the Second World War, the French stadium gradually disappeared as a pre-eminent staging-ground for mass politics, as the stadium crowd itself became progressively depoliticized.

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