Whitewashing Vichy

The French did put the Vichy traitors on trial. Those who were caught and tried early enough paid the price. Laval and the pro-Nazi editor and writer Robert Brasillach were judged and executed in 1945. Many lesser figures were shot or jailed. All over France women had their heads shaved because of their horizontal collaboration. What never took place, however, not even during the trial of Pétain, was a fundamental indictment of the prewar regime, an examination of why key institutions had served the Nazi occupier, why the bulk of the bourgeoisie collaborated, in keeping with the prewar slogan "better Hitler than the Popular Front." Since, betraying the hopes of the Resistance, liberation did not usher in a new society, the old one, when restored, needed judges and jailers, police and upper classes. A veil was discreetly spread over the awkward past.

This conspiracy of silence was facilitated by a clever syllogism. Because General de Gaulle had led the Resistance and de Gaulle was France, ergo, France was a nation of resisters. This myth suited almost everybody. The Communists, who were a key element in the Resistance, could boast of their record without anyone bringing up the less glorious period between the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the German invasion of Russia. The Gaullists were, naturally, the main beneficiaries of the legend. They also required a degree of obfuscation to prevent a split within the right between the majority who had followed Marshal Pétain and the minority who had rallied round de Gaulle. When Georges Pompidou granted Touvier a presidential pardon in 1971, it was not just to please the church. It was also to unite the conservative forces at a time of social stress. To achieve that purpose, however, one had to be discreet about wartime history. In French schoolbooks at the time you could learn more about the Battle of Britain or Pearl Harbor than about Pétain, Vichy and collaboration.

That silence provoked Marcel Ophüls to make his splendid documentary, The Sorrow and the Pity (1971), which revived the Vichy era, warts and all. French television banned his film for years, but it was shown in theaters and French young people began asking their parents, "And what were you doing during the war?" Since then there have been two conflicting trends in France. One is revisionist, featuring a small number of people trying to deny or minimize the Holocaust and a larger number treating collaboration not as a sin but as political wisdom. On the other side, we have writers, historians and filmmakers determined to tell the general public, and particularly the younger generation, the full, unvarnished story of that period. The trials of Touvier, Papon and Bousquet have been conceived as highlights in this campaign of collective education.

The attitude of successive governments in this affair has been, to say the least, ambiguous. To stage the trial of Klaus Barbie was fine, since it simply confirmed the criminality of the Germans. To bring a Bousquet to court was quite a different matter. A trial would adduce evidence of French complicity in those crimes at the highest level. It was likely to lead to a real debate about the state, its institutions, its function and its morality. The French authorities were clearly not enthusiastic about proceeding. The reluctance of the government and of the establishment, including the legal one, dragged out the procedure over a long period of time on the tacit assumption that the defendants would die, depriving the trials of their raison d'être.

The delays were countenanced by governments of all political complexions. François Mitterrand provides an example of this double-think. Although Mitterrand was a member of the Resistance, every year until last he laid a wreath on Pétain's tomb to celebrate the anniversary of Verdun--as if one could neatly separate the "hero" of World War I from the "villain" who, during World War II, led the French into one of the most shameful episodes of their history. In the case of Mitterrand this duality may also reflect his enthusiastic discovery of consensus politics, which, by definition, is opposed to splitting society and undermining its ruling class.

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