A depressing tale of collaboration, corruption, and subsequent denial that taxes the will of even the most determined Francophile

The history of France under German rule during World War II is a depressing tale of collaboration, corruption and subsequent denial that taxes the will of even the most determined Francophile

writes Mark Falcoff in his WSJ book review of Frederic Spotts' The Shameful Peace (danke zu wahabicorridor).

Perhaps not surprisingly it was not a French scholar but an American one, Robert Paxton, who produced the first serious examination of the period (1940-44)… Now comes Frederic Spotts, a British writer known for his studies of German history. With "The Shameful Peace" he lifts the lid on one of the least known -- and most shameful episodes -- of the period: namely, the role of artists and intellectuals in occupied France.

The first effect of the armistice was to convert the French capital into a kind of vacation paradise for the German occupier. … Representatives of leading Nazi figures, notably Hermann Goering, sacked the homes of wealthy Jews for masterpieces of art -- an expedition in which some of the city's grandest art dealers were pleased to assist. Even low-ranking German functionaries partook of the feast. "I never lived so well anywhere," a secretary-typist later recalled. "We could buy what we wanted. . . . [It was] the most wonderful and unforgettable time of my youth."

One area where the Germans completely understood what they were about, however, was in the co-opting of the French cultural establishment.

What made the French experience of German occupation so different from that of, say, Poland or Czechoslovakia or Greece was that Hitler, far from trying to eradicate French national culture, chose to nourish it as a distraction from his other demands. …

The most obvious minions of Berlin were fascist or protofascist intellectuals who had been at war with French democracy long before the armistice. … Here there could be no surprises. Other writers, however, had not been fascist proponents in the 1930s and simply went with the flow. As novelist Jean Giono put it with great economy of words: "I prefer being a living German to a dead Frenchman."

At a time when both food and fuel were painfully scarce, many cultural figures preferred to live well rather than poorly. The list here is far longer -- a virtual "Who's Who" of the French artistic world [including Picasso, often cited as a principled anti-Fascist, and Céline, often quoted by our detractors as an example of someone with obviously superior francophone sensibilities, artistic prowess, lucidité, and so on]. [Cocteau's] record of the times, Mr. Spotts writes, "gives the impression that the Germans he knew were visiting tourists rather than officers of an invading army."

… The need to nourish the myth of la France combattante -- the cornerstone of Gaullist ideology -- required far fewer collaborators than actually existed. The myth was also necessary to wrest the nimbus of Resistance from the communists, who claimed exclusive rights to it. Then, almost before anyone knew it, anti-Americanism became the ideology of choice for French intellectuals and artists, bringing both left and right happily together.

An excerpt on France's "blindness to several cardinal truths about the Occupation":

…the Occupation yielded its secrets only slowly and partially. The story remains complex and confusing, without a satisfying conclusion. Biography is still sanitized; history continues to be rewritten; silence prevails over candour. "The true France was not at Vichy, the true France never collaborated." So spake President Sarkosy as late as May 2008, on the anniversary of the end of the Second World War. But though the myths continue to be officially perpetuated, everyone in France knows they are false. Consequently there remains what de Gaulle once referred to as "a dull pain in the depths of our national consciousness'.

For all that has been written about the subject, for all the continuing [unease] and for all the importance of the issues involved, if you want to know how artists and intellectuals survived, worked and adapted, or if you want to have some idea of what cultural life was like and what policies were followed by German and Vichy authorities, you will have difficulty finding answers.

…Failure to understand the importance of culture in a nation's life was not a mistake Hitler made. For him culture was not peripheral but central to his Occupation policy. In the arts he saw a narcotic to be used to pacify the French and make them amenable to collaboration while he was busy with his war in the Soviet Union. So he not only allowed but actively encouraged a rich artistic life. … At the … time there were … artists who socialized with the Enemy and in some cases toured Germany as Hitler's guests as though unaware that the two countries were still at war.

…After the war the German ambassador in Paris during the Occupation made the astonishing claim that "it would be extremely difficult to name any notable French artist who had not supported collaboration'.