OPINION:
FIGHTERS IN THE SHADOWS: A NEW HISTORY OF THE FRENCH RESISTANCE
By Robert Gildea
Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, $35, 608 pages
In August 1944, Gen. Charles de Gaulle thrilled a Parisian crowd by declaring, “Paris liberated! Liberated by its own efforts, liberated by its people with the help of the armies of France, with the help of all France, that is France in combat. The one France, the true France, eternal France!”
As historian Robert Gildea scathingly documents, seldom has so much nonsense and misinformation been crammed into one oration. But de Gaulle piled lie atop lie with a reason. He laid the foundation for a myth that permeates France to this day: that the country freed itself of German occupation on its own, without the aid of any other power. Doing so “duly allowed France to reclaim its identity as the country of liberty and the rights of man.”
Mr. Gildea, a professor at Oxford University, explores the origins of the myth through a meticulous exploration of the evidence, and his book documents an entirely different France than that extolled by de Gaulle.
France surely suffered national shame with its capitulation to Nazi invaders. The country fought off Germany for four years 1914-1918; in 1940, it collapsed in six weeks. A puppet government was created in Vichy under Marshal Phillipe Petain. Remnants of the defeated French army in colonial North Africa sided with Vichy (i.e., the Nazis), fighting against American and other Allied troops who invaded Africa in 1942 as the first step toward defeating Germany.
Then a relatively obscure general, de Gaulle, hastened to London to claim leadership of the “Free French.” Prime Minister Winston Churchill permitted him to make “an address to the French people” over BBC in which he called for French soldiers on British soil to rally behind him. But few French even heard the broadcast; many of those who did questioned anointing de Gaulle as the leader of a government in exile.
So, to Mr. Gildea, the question became: What does “resistance” mean in the French context? He offers a dual definition. “In a word, it meant refusing to accept the French bid for armistice and the German occupation, and a willingness to do something about it that broke rules and courted risk.” But he also cites Resistance with a capital R, “providing intelligence for the Allies, escorting downed airmen to safety, spreading propaganda against the Germans or Vichy, sabotage, and in the last instance, armed struggle.”
As Mr. Gildea stresses, occupied France can be understood only if pre-war politics are considered. A leftist coalition that rightists claimed was dominated by “Jews and communists” ran the government through the time of invasion. And any wartime “resistance” was carried out against that continuing backdrop.
Mr. Gildea’s evidence, elicited through oral histories and documents, argues strongly that many persons in France were more concerned with who would dominate the country after peace rather than opposing the Germans. The communists emerged as the main opposition to the rightists. Roughly aligned with the communists, for practical reasons more than politics, were Jewish groups trying to save co-religionists from Nazi death camps, and others seeking refuge.
Mr. Gildea writes, “The French Resistance mobilized only a minority of French people. The vast majority learned to muddle through under German Occupation and long admired Marshal Petain ” To be sure, any person who offended the German occupiers paid a horrific price. The mere ownership of a firearm — even an ancient shotgun in a farm barn — brought a death penalty. The Germans slaughtered entire villages as reprisals for guerrilla actions.
What passed for a “capital R” Resistance began only after the Allies invaded in 1944, and the Nazis seized young men as slave labor. Threatened youths formed a plethora of guerrilla bands, which they supplied with tons of airdropped armaments. But the brave Frenchmen who rose to the challenge were handicapped by lack of leadership and military experience. And intensified German reprisal killings took an awful toll.
The Allies froze de Gaulle out of invasion plans, Roosevelt dismissing him as “an egotistical troublemaker” who “harbored Napoleon fantasies about seizing power in France as a dictator.” Military plans were to bypass Paris as an insignificant target and concentrate on driving out the Germans. FDR thought of putting France under a military government. He feared that communists could make France a Soviet camp satellite.
In the end, American divisions seized Paris, and de Gaulle was granted the favor of having his troops be first into the city. Even in the face of Mr. Gildea’s damning evidence, an objective observer must feel sympathy for the French. The pre-war government fumbled the nation’s defense, and the German occupiers were brutal beyond words. A complex read that is worth the effort.
• Joseph Goulden is the author of 18 nonfiction books.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.