scholarly journals Marseille, city of refuge: international solidarity, American humanitarianism, and Vichy France (1940-1942)

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (48) ◽  
pp. 364-385
Author(s):  
Emilien Tortel
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Local Context ◽  
World War ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Vichy France ◽  
International Solidarity ◽  
City Of Refuge ◽  
Second World

Anchored in the port of Marseille, this article studies encounters between international solidarity, American humanitarianism, and Vichy France’s nationalism in times of war and exile. Being the main free harbour in France after the country’s defeat against Germany in the spring of 1940, Marseille saw hundreds of thousands of refugees seeking refuge and exile on its shores. This massive flux gave rise to a local internationalism of humanitarian and solidarity networks bonded by an anti-fascist ideology. American humanitarians, diplomats, and radical leftist militants shaped this eclectic internationalism by providing crucial support for European refugees escaping the Nazi-backed state repression in France. Using the local archives of the department of Bouches-du-Rhône, this paper analyses how these actors and their ideologies met in Marseille and interacted with or against Vichy France’s nationalism. In the end, the extended historiography on refugees, American humanitarianism, solidarity networks, and French nationalism will be used to analyse global ideologies in a local context during the Second World War.

Shannon L. Fogg, Stealing Home: Looting, Restitution, and Reconstructing Jewish Lives in France, 1942–1947. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 197 pp.

2020 ◽  
pp. 290-292
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Vichy France ◽  
Second World ◽  
Oxford University Press

Several years ago, Shannon Fogg published an important book, The Politics of Everyday Life in Vichy France, in which she analyzed the effects of material distress on the range of attitudes toward the Vichy government and its treatment of strangers, showing that pragmatism generally prevailed over ideology. In this new book, Fogg maintains her focus on the problematics of everyday life but moves her spotlight to the victims of this same Vichy government, the Jews, and widens her chronological scope to include the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. ...

scholarly journals Complicity and memory in soldiers’ testimonies of the Algerian war of decolonisation in Esprit and Les Temps modernes

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 952-968 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh McDonnell
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Algerian War ◽  
Grey Zone ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
World War ◽  
Human Actions ◽  
War Memory ◽  
Vichy France ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
Second World

In the closing phase of the Algerian War in March 1962, Jean-Marie Domenach, director of the journal Esprit, upbraided his counterpart at Les Temps modernes, Jean-Paul Sartre, for failing to understand the greyness of most human actions and the pervasiveness of knots of complicity. Concern for the complexity of complicity was also apparent in Les Temps modernes circles, however, and it was precisely complicity, both in the form of violence of French troops and of the habituation or indifference of the broader French public, that editor Simone de Beauvoir termed a ‘tetanus of the imagination’. Strikingly, she suggested that a means of countering this affliction of getting used to the unconscionable were testimonies of soldiers returning from Algeria in both Les Temps modernes and Esprit. This article examines this mutual concern for the complexities of complicity and investigates its relationship to memory through the curious importance de Beauvoir placed on such testimonies in these two journals. The discussion looks at the mobilisation of the memory of the Second World War in these testimonies, including analogies with fascism and Nazism, and argues that, rather than merely fashionable hyperbole, they powerfully depicted a multifaceted crisis: in Algeria, of French youth, and of France itself. The second part of the article investigates the testimonies’ representation of military institutionalisation – including its detrimental effects on imagination and the facilitation of violence. These representations of systemic or institutional complicity are contextualised alongside scholarly claims that the Algerian war involved a renegotiation of the memory of Vichy France. I argue that the example of these testimonies calls for a qualification of such claims; though they prefigured later conceptions of a complicity memory trope, or ‘the grey zone’ of Vichy France, they did not override the dominant Second World War memory characterised by heroes and victims.

scholarly journals The Neofascist Network and Madrid, 1945–1953: From City of Refuge to Transnational Hub and Centre of Operations

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Pablo del Hierro
Keyword(s):  
Driving Forces ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
World War ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
City Of Refuge ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

The aim of this paper is to trace the evolution of the neofascist networks from the vantage point, between 1945 and 1953, of Madrid, a city where a myriad of extreme right activists gathered to discuss and promote their cause at a transnational level. Exploring the local socio-political context in which these (neo)-fascists moved, and the networks that they formed, the study delves into the creation of ratlines crucial for fascists to escape from the Allied prosecution once the Second World War was over, the consolidation of the city as a central meeting point for fascists from all over the world (from Degrelle to Skorzeny, passing by Horia Sima or Filippo Anfuso), discussions around the possible creation of paramilitary organisations, and the everyday lives of (neo)-fascists operating in Madrid. On the basis of police reports, secret service intelligences and other primary sources, this paper foregrounds the role of the fascist diaspora and the subsequent interactions as driving forces enabling entanglements, and cooperation among (neo)-fascist movements and the Francoist regime, at various formal or informal political levels.

Vietnamese Collaborationism in Vichy France

2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 987-1008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Keith
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Nazi Occupation ◽  
Vichy France ◽  
Political Choices ◽  
Transnational Migrations ◽  
Second World

During the Second World War, a small group of Vietnamese émigrés in Vichy France drew powerful inspiration from the ideological and material possibilities of the Nazi occupation. Their history reveals the colonial dimensions of a process of collaboration too often cast as solely European. It also sheds light on the transnational migrations and intellectual circulations that made European experiences an important part of Asian wartime political choices. Finally, their myriad trajectories after the war are a powerful example of the ideological reconfigurations and reversals of Asian politics during decolonization.

Gender and the Second World War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinna Peniston-Bird ◽  
Emma Vickers
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Second World
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