"Wedding in Germany Fallingbostel, May 1969" "Dear children, even though your stomachs are full, you can stand a little speech." "Thirty years ago, when your mother and I married, the sky was blue, but dark clouds were already looming on the horizon:" "the clouds of World War Two." "All of us gathered here today hope with all our hearts that you be spared such suffering." "Clermont-Ferrand: 134,000 residents in the Puy-de-Dôme region." "The capital of Auvergne is 240 miles from Paris and 37 miles from Vichy, which was the capital of France from 1940 to 1944." "Gergovie, a nearby Gallic town, used to be the fortified town of Vercingétorix, conquered by Julius Caesar." "A father tells his children about a more recent defeat." "In 1939, I was 27 years old." "I was the father of a large family, so I hadn't been sent to the front." "The front was the Maginot Line." "I'd been sent to Montferrand, near Clermont, and my wife's dairywoman, Mrs Michel, had criticised me for not going to the front." "So, after the débâcle," "I told her that there was no point in me going to the front, since the front came to me." "Was there anything other than courage in the Resistance?" "Of course." "But the two emotions I experienced the most frequently were sorrow and pity." "The Colonel was from Action Française" "The Major was a moderate," "The Captain was all for the diocese," "The Lieutenant couldn't stand the church." "THE SORROW The adjutant was a fervent extremist" "AND THE PITY The sergeant, a convinced socialist" "CHRONICLE OF A FRENCH CITY The corporal, inscribed on all the lists" "UNDER THE OCCUPATION And the private at the bookie's!" "All these men made excellent Frenchmen." "Excellent soldiers who march in time." "Thinking that the Republic is still the best thing going." "Now most of these strapping lads" "A FILM BY MARCEL OPHULS don't share the same political views." "But they all agree, no matter what their view" "Part 1:" "THE COLLAPSE is just to be left in bloody peace!" "Two brothers, both local farmers, live a few miles from Clermont." "They have many memories of German occupation." "Is that your village?" "That's where I was born." "I was born near that church there, and later I lived on the farm facing the school." "You can't help but love your country." "Did you think about it in Buchenwald?" "Not much." " You didn't?" " No." " What did you think about?" " Surviving." "That's it." "That's mainly what I thought about." "But I'm talking about me, about how I saw things." "I'm not talking about those who..." "There were some people who cried." "When I saw them cry, I knew that they would never make it." "No way." "You had to think about yourself first, and think about others after." "This politician also has reasons to remember." "For me, it was an experience that I will never forget." "This experience may have had a few secondary effects, but I don't believe it has affected my attitude or behaviour." "Has it not made you feel bitter towards certain French people?" "No, I wouldn't say that." "It showed me that there are certain tendencies and habits, which, when they are fired, fed, or stimulated, crop up like weeds, and so we must always be on the defence." "We have to protect our youth from this type of propaganda." "We have to talk to them about it more than we talked about it a generation or two ago." "The manager of the Philips company also has reasons to remember." "As I was saying, his friends would ask me why I joined the Resistance." "Why?" "Because going into a restaurant and seeing Germans at a table, and being told there's only four steaks left for the Germans and none for us was a little frustrating, seeing as that steak came from our cows in Auvergne." "So it was our right to eat it before giving it away." "That's my first reason." "My second reason was that the Germans were forever imposing curfews." "It was, after all, a Nazi regime, a totalitarian regime, no matter how you look at it." "It was worth fighting for, it was even worth dying for, rather than to live as slaves." "Hence, the Resistance." "Lasting peace is what we need." "There's nothing more senseless than fighting." "That's what I think." " Depends on what you're fighting for." " Do you think they really knew?" " They didn't know?" " I doubt it." "There are a few fanatics who know why." " Did you know why?" " Yes, I did." " But you weren't a fanatic?" " No, but..." "But when I went off to war in 1940..." "I left in 1939, on September 2, and I was sent to Modane." "What could I have clone?" "I knew nothing." "I was going to kill guys I'd never seen before, who had never harmed me." "Later, they did harm us when they arrived in France." "They messed us up." "Even in moments of calm, the soldiers are ready to fight." "Faced with the enemy, they have the winning qualities of patience, courage, vigilance, determination, and confidence." "In right-thinking circles, in high society in Paris, they sympathised with our soldiers, whose troubles were unfortunately nothing compared to what came later." "And consequently, during this period, people sought to distract them, to entertain them, to relieve them from the boredom of the Maginot Line, where time passed at a snail's pace." "It must've been painfully boring." "So the right-thinking women of the Parisian bourgeoisie decided to form a committee to entertain our valiant soldiers, to provide them with a more pleasant view." "The idea was to plant rosebushes on the Maginot Line, to make it look prettier, to create a nicer atmosphere." "And there were people who donated money towards these rosebushes, so that our soldiers didn't have to look at the horrid, concrete walls, and to give them a flowery environment in which to live." "It's pathetic when you think about the awful things that came later." "The infantry is advancing at great intervals." "In Oisemont, the enemy has set fire to the tanks of an oil factory." "It took two weeks in Poland." "We felt it would be just as quick in France, as we were anxious to go home." "And,indeed, we took France in just one month." "...and onwards it goes." "Next stop:" "Paris." "Naturally, we attacked on several occasions, but the hardest time was in Oing, on the Belgian border." "The Belgian blockhaus weren't ready, but we had to take position in them." "The Germans arrived equipped with tanks." "All that we had were machine guns." "They proceeded to kill everyone inside, because it made such an easy target." "There were no battlements." "They hadn't even put up reinforced doors." "I'm telling you, we walked..." "We withdrew, and we must have walked at least 20 miles, without running across any troops." "Not one single troop." "Nothing, nothing, nothing." "First of all, I'd like to emphasise the fact that the German staff was not expecting to achieve such a quick, resounding success." "We soldiers, unlike Hitler, were convinced that we were facing the same adversary as in 1914-1918, a determined, brave adversary, prepared to fight to the bitter end." "Unfortunately, I must admit that Hitler was right in this case." "He was always saying how the French were incapable of repeating their performance in World War I, and he never missed an opportunity to add to this statement a few disagreeable and derisory remarks or comments on the general emotional and moral state of France." "GERMAN NEW S" "Near Noyon, General Stummel, taking the vanguard with his troops, with his adjutant, took several prisoners." "It began with two." "Later, many others surrendered." "The prisoners come from every nation and every walk of life." "So-called defenders of the great nation." "In fact, a shame for the white race." "These are the black brothers of the French." "In the words of Chamberlain," ""We, together with our allies, are the guardians of civilisation."" ""Together we fight medieval barbarism."" "These are the guardians of civilisation." "These are the barbarians." "This is the war of the Franco-English plutocrats." "They began this war rashly without taking any heed of the consequences, to fight for the English lords, not only until the last Frenchman, but until the last French house." "Mrs Tausend, you stayed in Germany." "Did you read the papers?" "Did you watch the German news?" "Yes, we followed the events closely." "Naturally, we were a bit frightened." "But the news of victory made us happy." "These cars are stopped for a lack of petrol." "The Jewish warmongers and Parisian plutocrats, with their suitcases full of gold and precious stones, have fled." "This shortage of petrol put a crimp in their plans." "The streets were hopelessly blocked." "Yet these English-loving traitors and deserters continued their journey on foot." "These are the French people who have been mercilessly evacuated and dragged along in the flood of the routed French army." "Soon, these people will be able to go home." "The German people were spared such a trial, thanks to the Fuhrer and his German soldiers." "During that time, there was an enormous upsurge of the people, who were completely panicked, terrified." "Fate willed that I should be given leave in the last few days of the month of April." "Consequently, I was in Paris in early May when the Germans invaded." "On the roads, people were going mad, terrified by the bombings." "With them, they brought what they could:" "children, pets, precious objects..." "Some rode on wagons, others on bicycles." "It was a mish-mash of everything and everyone." "It was awful to see." "It was all the more awful in that the Germans, in an effort to block and ruin the roads for the soldiers," "didn't hesitate in bombing these columns of refugees." "As a result, and I can attest to this fact, there were bodies strewn all over the place: men, women, horses." "Car wrecks sprinkled the roads." "It was a scene from hell." "And yet this wave, this flood of people, continued to move south." "Our impressions?" "We saw destroyed villages, burned lands..." "It did have a certain effect on us." " And the people on the roads?" " They were fleeing the bad guys." "What do you mean?" "Weren't you the bad guys?" "At first, we were seen as the enemy who was set to destroy the country." "Then they began to see that we just wanted to help, and that reassured them." "The officers or the staff were clearly out of their depth." "Having the trains, the roads, and all telecommunications cut off led to a situation in which any plans the soldiers had made were suddenly completely ruined." "In addition, certain military circles shared the attitude of many civilians," "and tackled the war unenthusiastically." "After all, they were living in..." "I'm not saying they were traitors." "In any case, there were very few traitors." "But this attitude of preferring Hitler to Léon Blum was an attitude that had become very popular in bourgeois circles." "And this was a circle to which many of the soldiers belonged." "THE GREAT BATTLE OF FRANCE" "On June 14, 1940, the Germans occupied Paris." "In Clermont, the papers went mad." "Le Moniteur took a stand, asking the people to stand up and fight, to resist, to remain free." "The owner of this anti-defeatist paper, Pierre Laval, a deputy for Auvergne, was, at the same time, preparing for surrender." "The last government of the Third Republic slowly moved southwards." "Paul Reynaud wanted to keep fighting, but Philippe Pétain was already taking charge." "In Briare, Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden met with their allies for the last time." "I've always felt that Reynaud wanted to continue, that he remained calm and firm." "Everyone was in a very difficult position then." "I also believe, and this is something he told both Churchill and me, that he wasn't very happy having Pétain as a part of his government." " He 'd foreseen the difficulties?" " Yes, already in Briare." "Now, I was a young soldier in World War I, and for me, Pétain was the hero of Verdun." "But his character had changed." "That's to be expected with age." "I'm sure he was opposed to the idea of your cities being destroyed, because he spoke of it at dinner, saying, "It's awful seeing our lovely cities destroyed."" "and I had to answer, "Yes, I understand." ""It's hard for an Englishman to say this, but there are worse things" ""than the destruction of cities."" "But I don't think he was convinced." "We flew over France at a very low altitude." " Hedgehopping?" " Yes." "In June, there's nothing quite like the Norman and Breton countryside." "And I remember, as if it only happened yesterday," "I remember thinking it was lovely, but would I ever see it again?" "And it seemed rather unlikely that I would." "Then the political climate changed and became unbearable in Bordeaux." "Suddenly, treason was everywhere." "There was a will to surrender, and a desire to get along with the victors at any price." "Anglophobia, ever-present in France, resurfaced with new vigour, and all this went hand in hand with a horrible kind of cynicism." "The military leaders, the ones who had messed up, weren't even mentioned." "Instead, people blamed absolutely everything on Léon Blum, the Front Populaire and so forth." "And so we consoled ourselves for the downfall of our nation by getting petty revenge in matters of internal affairs, a trend which, as you know, continued long afterwards." "On June 16, the government met in Bordeaux." "Paul Reynaud was defeated by the deputies who refused to leave France and Marshal Pétain became the head of government." "Adolf Hitler's elite SS troops have invaded Vichy." "I felt terribly humiliated, as I had been sent on a mission on an English motorcycle" "and was heading to Paris, when I saw the Germans going the other way." "Now, being rather absent-minded," "I saw there were some people following these German troops, and assumed it was the English." "So they were going one way, and I was going the other." "I saw the swastikas on their helmets, and I thought I should go no further." "But no one asked me to stop." "Everyone was too busy going their own way." "If I didn't like it, tough." "The Resistance in Clermont was quickly crushed." "But the struggle, albeit subdued, continued." "Hitler's SS division conquered Clermont-Ferrand." "German troops occupied the city for three days." "Zepp Dietrich, division commander, declared victory on the Place de Jaude, as his troops polished their boots in front of the locals, before heading off to new victories." "The Germans didn't return to Clermont until November 1942." "Our aim now is to take the arms depot in Etienne." "An entire infantry regiment has simply surrendered." "At first, I did the same as everyone." "I hadn't understood." "On the morning of June 24, the lieutenant declared that Marshal Pétain had requested an armistice." "I knew what he meant by armistice, but I wasn't sure about "Marshal."" "I was never particularly in favour of Pétain's regime." "Nonetheless, like the other 40 million Frenchmen who experienced that same moment," "when I saw the rout, when I saw that the Germans were in Biarritz, and that France had been completely invaded," "I thought, like everyone else," ""Will anyone be able to end this massacre?"" "People of France, as requested by the President of the Republic," "I shall henceforth be the leader of the French government." "Convinced of the affection of our admirable army, whose heroism stands as testimony to our long military tradition as they fight an enemy which outnumbers them, convinced that our army's resistance has fulfilled our duty towards our allies," "convinced of the support pledged by the former soldiers I led, convinced of the French people's faith in me," "I give France the gift of myself, to ease its troubles." "In these difficult times, I think of the poor refugees, who, in the depths of despair, trudge across our roads." "I extend my compassion and concern for them." "My heart is heavy as I tell you today that the fight must end." "Last night, I spoke with our adversary and asked if they were prepared to help me, between soldiers, after the fight, with honour intact, to find a way to end the hostilities." "From the Fuhrer headquarters a historical piece of news:" "The prime minister of the new French government, Marshal Pétain, has declared, in a broadcast to the French people, that France should lay down its arms." "Of course, I was happy to hear we'd won." "The defeat gave me the same feeling I would get when I played rugby." "I don't like losing, especially when it's 60 to O." "I hate drawn-out defeats." "This stone is a reminder of the humiliation of Germany on November 11, 1918." "Is it true that France had given England its word of honour that it wouldn't agree to a separate truce?" "I think we..." "That was before I was a member of government." "I think we had reached an agreement whereby neither party would cease fighting." " Without the other party's consent." " Right." "But we didn't discuss that at all when Churchill and I were there, because we accepted the position France had taken." " In Briare, he said..." " That he'd accept an armistice?" "No, he said we accepted the fact that you may not be able to go on." "Nothing was said about an armistice." "It's clear that between a ceasefire and an armistice, there's a big difference." "Exactly." "He simply said, "We understand that you cannot go on any longer."" "That was clear." "The question was quite simply, "What are you going to do?"" "I even sent Churchill a short letter after we returned from Briare, which has since been published, saying that we must make a clear distinction." "If the French can no longer fight, that's one thing." "But if they make it easy for the enemy, that's another." "La Madeleine." "Early today in Paris, the Fuhrer made an unexpected visit." "During his tour of Paris, he also visited this building." "Place de Ia Concorde." "The Arc de Triomphe." "Trocadéro." "A look at the Eiffel Tower." "On the Fuhrer's left, Professor Speer." "One thing we should remember is that when France agreed to an armistice, even though we didn't want to lose, how many Frenchmen said," ""It's well that ends well." "So much the better."" "As for Marshal Pétain, he knew what he was doing in Vichy." "In every canton and every town, he formed what was called the French Legion." " The Legion of Companions." " It was meant for us veterans who'd fought in World War I." "Everyone, except me, went on Sundays." "I'm the only one who never set foot in there." "It's true." "They would attend the raising of the colours on the market place every Sunday, wearing their hammer and francisc." "No, not hammer." "I don't mean the hammer and sickle." "What was it called again?" " The sword." " Whatever." "They'd all been given a beret." "Can you imagine?" "Of course, I never set foot there." "Not on your life." "But when I saw what happened, I understood." "So suddenly, this old marshal suggests an armistice with French honour intact and so forth." "As a young Frenchman, do you feel the defeat was justified?" "Does it not disgust you?" "No, defeat was the inevitable consequence of French politics." "In fact, this was the theme propagated by the Vichy government." "If we were defeated, they claimed, it was because for so many years, we had to put up with party politics, which is the reason France is in this situation today." "How did that phrase go?" ""The parties which have harmed us so much..."" "It was..." "No, that's not it." " Something about lies." " The lies that harmed us." "Right. "I hate the lies that have harmed us so much."" "At the same time, there was another appeal launched by de Gaulle, an appeal which apparently very few people in France heard." "I certainly didn't hear it." "But as a pilot, weren't you slightly tempted to..." "I imagine that a certain number of people in the same unit as you chose to "continue the struggle," as they said." "There weren't many who did." "Let's get it straight." "It's true that some people attempted to flee to North Africa." "Later, the situation stabilised." "Not so many fled." "Did it ever cross your mind to flee?" "Of course." "But I didn't think about it for long." "My father quickly made me understand that Marshal Pétain guaranteed a new order, renewed honour, etc." "The victor of Verdun guaranteed France's honour and the establishment of a new order." "This seemed not only desirable, but necessary, to many Frenchmen." "They respected and had faith in the Marshal." "In Clermont, the spirit of renewal filled Pierre Laval's Le Moniteur." "Editorials sought those responsible for defeat and found them." ""Let's be French." ""Too much foreign influence has led to many problems."" "On June 26, 1940, in the magistrate's court," "René Mons was sentenced to three months in jail for defeatism." "Editorial." "We demand those responsible be tried and an analysis of our problems ensue." "This quickly led to xenophobia, Anglophobia and anti-Semitism." "Gaining French nationality became harder." "Vichy came out with the decree:" ""The French elite must be restored."" "On that day, July 29, 1940," "Clermont butcher Antoine Labronne was tried and given a large fine for having sold rotting ham." "Did you ever speak about what the papers said back then?" " Never." " Never?" "We were totally cut off from the world, because there was one value that we all shared, and that was caution." "We didn't know what the butcher thought, or the milkman, or the engineer or the intellectual." "We had no idea." "Like everyone else, we stayed on our guard." "What do you think people's main concern was back then?" "Food." "That took up most of your time?" "Definitely." "Animals were illicitly butchered." "One needed a bit of meat to survive." "As you know, the French are very good at cheating." "One had to have a bit more bread than the usual ration, or a bit more tobacco by smiling nicely at the tobacconist." "A bit more of everything." "So every weekend, a regular parade of cyclists would go for supplies." "They had devised a system based on tickets, on ration cards." "Personally, I was a smoker, and it was awful not having cigarettes." "It was a horrible situation." "People would do anything, even steal." "I got so desperate that I even rolled artichoke leaves and smoked them." "The children who were born during that time, between 1942 and 1944, should have suffered from rickets, and I say this as a doctor." "In our family, it was ironic." "These young ladies have a brother, who is 27 years old, and was born in 1942." "He's six foot one!" "We fed him so much to avoid rickets that he turned into a giant." "He's a great tennis player, an architect, and a giant to boot." "Are you what they call "a bourgeois" in a large provincial town?" "If being bourgeois means eating properly, hunting in the Sologne, having a hunting ground in Sanscoin and in Sérye, and a son-in-law who owns Lake Mont-Cinére, then I'm a bourgeois." "When did you first begin to experience the consequences of the times, in other words, persecution?" "How did you feel about that?" "Did anything happen?" "Not before 1942." "The only extraordinary event that occurred is that before the children were born, once again," "in September 1942, the hunting season was re-opened." "What an event." "It was important to the hunters." "Game had been untouched for two years so there was an abundance of it." "It was a very satisfying experience for those who owned a gun." "In their little nests in the backyard, my little rabbits are so sweet." "Until recently, I hated hutches, and I despised and insulted our gentle little friends, now the centre of our attention." "Just think, a rabbit!" "Firstly, it will delight the cook." "and as its skin dries in the wind, the whole family rejoices." "Follow my example and give rabbit breeding a try." "As you can see, I love, you love, we all love rabbits in every form!" "In reality, the French aren't normally very involved in politics." "Once in a blue moon, they decide to take action and storm the Bastille, or to fight religious wars for 50 years, or to initiate the French Revolution, or to set off to conquer Europe." "But, normally speaking, they're just as peaceable as anyone else." "One thing is for sure:" "the French, in general, like a peaceful regime, a regime which has authority, but is preferably humane." "In any case, they feel the need to be protected." "They're quite paternalistic." "Does this explains Pétain's popularity?" "Definitely." "I might add that, as a sergeant in the French army," "I've seen a routed army." "and it's not a pretty sight." "There's no denying that, for some time, Pétain was extremely popular." "He was viewed as one of the good old guys, perhaps a bit senile, but after all, he had given himself to France." "That was a clever way of putting it." "He gave the gift of himself." "So everyone thought that an old guy like him couldn't do any harm." "He could only help France." "At his age, what harm could he do?" "These arguments, albeit feeble, were how people justified Pétain." "THE MARSHAL'S VISIT" "When we went all over the world, we were dying to get back on the train." "Our nose on the window, we open the door and embrace everything like good bread." "The old bell tower in the setting sun." "Oh, France smells so good!" "Those big meadows with their wild flowers." "Oh, France smells so good!" "This little garden sign, "Beware of clogs"." "Oh, France smells so good!" "At each station stop you catch the words:" ""All aboard for the Paris Express"" "Oh, France smells so good!" "And oh so gently, life starts again," "You'd promised yourself to swallow it all." "But these blue dreams, these gigantic projects, for a few days we let them slide." "This pretty brunette with heavenly eyes." "Oh, France smells so good!" "The betting office which shuts at noon." "Oh, France smells so good!" "Running a tab at the little bar." "Oh, France smells so good!" "It's Saturday, lie back, no worries till Monday," "A game of Belote or Dix de Der." "Oh, the country smells good!" "Which country?" "Our country smells so good, of course!" "I missed Mers-el-Kébir." "I only heard about what happened two weeks later." "I never understood Mers-el-Kébir." "Even now, having read many books on the subject of Mers-el-Kébir," "I still don't understand." "It was always a mystery to me." "Mers-el-Kébir was a mystery indeed." "Do you mean you don't understand why the English did what they did?" "No, I never really understood the English." "After leaving Churchill, I was a member in the House of Commons," "I went to the House of Commons, got my car, and drove myself through Hyde Park." "In the middle of the park, I saw a group of French sailors, with their little red pompoms on their képis." "They were running and playing with an equal number of girls, or "young ladies" rather." "They were running and playing and screaming." "They couldn't understand a word of what the other was saying." "Then a horrible feeling swept over me." "It was sheer luck that I didn't crash the car, because suddenly I remembered Churchill's ultimatum I'd just read, and I thought of those French boats in Mers-el-Kébir, where there were other sailors, also wearing képis with little red pompoms," "and I wondered what was going to happen to them tomorrow." "These are the victims of the most base and loathsome attack ever." "Clearly, France's former ally only attacks those who cannot fight back." "On the morning of the attack," "Admiral Gensoul received the English ultimatum." "Admiral Somerville proceeded to send several delegations, in order to explain to Gensoul the options proposed by Churchill:" "they could join the Free French, allow themselves to be disarmed, or head to a neutral port which was out of German reach." "Admiral Gensoul refused all three options, as he considered them dishonourable solutions." "What we didn't dare to risk happening was letting the boats fall into enemy hands." "We simply couldn't take the risk." "But wasn't there also a psychological risk?" "Yes, a considerable risk." "It allowed the Germans to spread propaganda." "And Vichy, too." "Lord knows they used the opportunity." "I think we understood that, but at the time, we had very little choice in the matter." "There were 1,600 sailors killed by the British Navy." "The British Navy attempted to take over the French Navy." "That was clear to us at the time." "We thought that..." "We believed the armistice would be respected by the Germans." "In France, we thought, as the Vichy government had told us, that the French Navy would never be given over to the Germans." "For us, that was a fact." "I was brought up to believe that promises were kept, and I just couldn't imagine that there could be political dealings that would eventually lead to the French Navy being given away." "There was no way." "So we viewed it as a brutal attack." "There was also an additional moral problem, in that, according to many testimonies, the sailors whose boats were shelled by the British believed at that moment they were going to cast off in order to join the British fleet." "That's terrible." "Had we felt there was any hope of that, we would never have attacked." "But there was no hope." "Everything we said about the Germans was proved in Bizerta, where the Germans proceeded to give the French admiral twenty minutes to surrender, to surrender boats and all, on pain of an immediate bombing attack, or of being taken prisoner." "Our predictions all came true." "We knew who we were dealing with." "It was then, shortly after these events, that the French, whose faith in the English had been greatly shaken, made contact with us for the first time, through General Huntziger at the Armistice Commission in Wiesbaden," "to discuss the possibility of changing the armistice clauses to allow military collaboration." "And it was the discussion of such options, for which each side undoubtedly had its own personal motivations," "that initiated the negotiations, which are now known as "collaboration."" "While the talks were beginning," "Hitler and Pétain agreed to meet in Montoire." "In our first meeting, Laval told me he was a Germanophile." "And as he had known me for years, he asked me to put in a good word for him with Hitler, and I did." "I think Hitler felt Laval was sincere, at least in one aspect:" "when he spoke of collaboration." "And that was the main issue at the second meeting." "In such cases, the defeated want to know what will become of them." "What will the peace treaty be like?" "Whereas the victors I've often seen generally don't know what's next and cannot answer such questions." "That's how it went in Montoire." "Hitler didn't know how to answer Pétain's questions about boundaries or the fate of prisoners." "So it ended with everything up in the air." "Ah, Montoire..." "Now that was quite a story." "Where was this Montoire, anyhow?" "Everyone was looking it up in the atlas to see where it was." "When we heard what had transpired, it was depressing." "Some even cried the next day." " People were crying?" " Yes." "Soon afterwards, a new slogan became popular," ""Collaboration is..."" ""Give me your watch, I'll give you the time."" "That was the slogan." "That was collaboration." "He often said, also in my presence, that he hadn't yet decided whether England or France should pay for the war." "On the basis of his "race ideology,"" "or whatever you can call this point of view, many felt much more related to the English than to the French." "I am convinced that France, as Hitler saw it, could only play a minor role in a National Socialist Europe." "He had never been in France or anywhere else in Europe." "Whatever knowledge he had was derived from books, which had first been adapted to his point of view." "In his mind, he felt that a decline of the French people was unavoidable, and this idea was confirmed by the French defeat." "During his travels, Hitler sometimes shared his thoughts with others." "April 5, 1942." "Suppertime." "The Fuhrer says that if one plans on ignoring the terms of a contract, no use quibbling over details." "Hence, we must assure ourselves that the French are sincere." "No point in trying to pickpocket an experienced pickpocket like the Fuhrer himself." "In any case, France's main task for the next 50 years is to repair the damage done at Versailles." "April 24, 1942." "Suppertime." "The Fuhrer says he is against marriages between the Wehrmacht and foreigners in occupied lands." "Such demands are generally based on sexual frustration, which is common in troops abroad." "He is struck by the contrast between the photos of the German men, and those of the women, who are very shabby looking." "The Fuhrer feels that such marriages are doomed from the start, both in terms of individual happiness and racial purity." "He is more in favour of harmless passing fancies, which are inevitable in this type of situation." "The conditions created by National Socialism within German structures at that time made it impossible for us to respect the clauses of the armistice." "We couldn't help what happened, any more than we could have helped all the other horrible things which continue to haunt any rational human being." "We couldn't stop Hitler and company from invading Alsace and Lorraine, making them a part of the Third Reich, and eventually incorporating their youth into the Wehrmacht." "This was all out of our hands." "We can reproach ourselves until kingdom come, but there was nothing we could do." "You say that after Russia, you were sent to Alsace, and then France." "Why?" "Was Alsace not France?" "No." "For us, it wasn't French territory." "The people were pro-German." "I even brought my whole family." "There were some people with bad intentions, some patriots who were ready to do anything." "But there weren't many." "So I felt like I was in a country of German origin." "And now?" "I've never gone back." "No, but what do you think of it now?" "I think it's true." "I think it belongs to Germany." "Here a show is being put on for the SS." "Bruno Fritz's amusing ice hockey report." "The German player is taken by surprise and falls down on on the ice!" "He stands up again." "It feels too cold." "Thanks to Franco-German economic collaboration, 100,000 French workers now work in Germany." "Four trains leave the capital weekly and head for German industrial regions." "Today, at the Gare du Nord, the war councillor Michel has come to shake the hand of worker number 110,000:" "Edouard Lefebvre." "Tell us, Mr Lefebvre, were you unemployed?" " That's right." " For how long?" "It's been two years now." " Are you married?" " With children." "This vast organisation has already had good results:" "Lower unemployment rates, and understanding between workers." "I'd worked for the Finance Minister and the State Secretary since 1923." "In 1940, Mr Lansfried requested that I go to Paris, as head of the military-controlled finance division in occupied France." "He didn't want a National Socialist party member in this position." "Were you not a member of the party?" "Yes, shortly before, I had joined the party, again at the request of Mr Lansfried." "We tried to be as reasonable as possible, and as fair as possible, not only in our own interests, but in those of France as well." "This famous democracy, in the past 20 years, has proved itself incapable of eliminating such poverty." "The Third Reich, however, aims to provide its workers everywhere in Germany with healthy and beautiful hometowns." "This is a new settlement in a small industrial town, which naturally has a daycare centre, a clinic, a centre for mothers and children and an X-Ray lab." "One gets the impression from such reports that German propaganda was quite open in its racial prejudice, and often implied that German discipline and structure were necessary qualities to clean up what was considered to be "the French mess"." "Yes, there is some truth in what you say." "In our offices in Paris, we also had a propaganda department." "But it received orders directly from Berlin." "And I would like to point out that, from the outset of my job..." "It was the first ministerial-level visit from the French government, the Minister of Transport visited in September 1940." "He was accompanied by the owner of a racing stable, who wanted permission to begin horse racing again, as it was a very popular national pastime." "The races are ever-popular." "One thing is clear, Paris has become Paris once again." "I listened to my collaborators and said, "Why not?"" "And so the races started up again, and continued until 1944." "Thanks to us, the theatres were able to open their doors again." "We often went to the theatre, alone or with friends." "The Germans also attended the races, which is how the different parties made contact quite spontaneously." "Personal relationships developed between the different sides, probably for various reasons." "I'm sure you're aware there has been a tendency in France since the war to deny that such contact ever existed." "Yes, but it did exist." "Germany was triumphant, and there wasn't a single front from which it failed to come home victorious." "There's no denying that the German army made quite an impression on the youth in France." "Seeing that army of young men, stripped to the waist..." "After all, I'm the son of a soldier and I was a soldier myself." "Sense of responsibility, hierarchy and discipline mean a lot." "A well-disciplined army was important to people like us." "This was the first time we had seen such an ideal army." "The French army was nothing compared to this army who could put the fear of God into an entire people." "It sounds awful to say, but it's the truth of the matter." "We solemnly swear to unite" "and to place our forces," "our faith, our ardour," "at the service of the Marshal," "at the service of France." "This campfire draws a three-day meeting to an end, during which the discipline and dedication of these young men were proved once again." "The French believe servicemen should be tough as nails, and at the end of the day, they always turn to servicemen," "whether it be to restore order, to prevent a coup-d'état, or to organise a coup-d'état." "But the serviceman is omnipresent, with his cap, his pompom, his sabre, no matter what his rank may be." "The French love their army." "VICHY, APRIL 1969 Poem by Officer C. Languillon, published on the front page of Le Moniteur on November 24, 1940." ""His name rings as a gun shot." ""Pétain ready for the challenge?" "The soul is willing." ""But goodness is ever aloof." ""The great victor, even greater in defeat." ""Schemers, foreigners, buffoons and fools," ""have brought you to your knees, O France." ""The hero of Verdun, cleaning the slate," ""Is setting our house in order from top to bottom." ""A Herculean labour, a difficult recovery." ""From the ruins come muffled groans." ""Former profiteers writhe in the rubble."" "Pétain, in a series of speeches, drew conclusions from this defeat, and he did so with skill." "He could woo his audience." "If one was to read the texts now, I haven't read them in years, but I bet if you read them now, you would be quite surprised." "Yes, the texts relied heavily on the people's collective unconscious." "Absolutely right." " He blamed the parliament." " Yes, the parliamentary system..." "Certain employers were suspect... foreign..." " Cosmopolitan..." " ...not to mention dark-skinned." "And, of course, he blamed the Communist Party." "The Communist Party was the cause of all evils." "All hotels were requisitioned, and the Hôtel du Parc was occupied by Marshal Pétain and his staff." "This is where I met my friend, Colonel de Gorostarzu, who lived with Pétain." "He was the chief of staff for his aviation department." "Consequently, I was often at the Hôtel du Parc." "It was always busy, with lots of people milling around." "Everyone kept their voices down and spied on their neighbours." "Personally, I wasn't used to their system, but when I spoke, I followed everyone's example." "They were forever shushing one another." " Everyone was very suspicious." " Of the enemy or of one another?" "A bit of both." "Are you a Republican?" "Not really." " Not really?" " No." "You're more of a Monarchist?" "Yes, that's right." "French news, late 1940." "Pilot-sergeant Gontier de Vasse, veteran of WWI, volunteer in '39, hurt in Dunkirk, has, of his own free will, agreed to make the following declaration:" "Ever since my return from England aboard The Sphinx on October 5," "I've been surprised by the number of my compatriots who still believe the wounded in Narvik and Dunkirk were all well-treated by our ex-ally." "And this is why I've decided to share my memories with you." "When we arrived in England, we harboured no grudge against our English comrades." "But after the tragedy in June, when we were invited to come and serve under a new flag, when they offered to pay us our dues in pounds sterling, we could only reply with disdain and indignation." "We French soldiers can only serve under our own colours." "Anything else would be treason." "Fellow Frenchmen, comrades, our duty is to stand side by side behind our leader, Marshal Pétain, to guarantee France a place of honour in a new Europe, and to allow the prisoners to return home immediately." "It is a difficult task." "Those who try to divide us are enemies." "United we stand, divided we fall." "The idea was to get out of the war, come what may, as quickly as possible." "There were 15,000 French sailors in Liverpool." "I went and spoke to them." "I tried to persuade them to continue the war." "But there was no way." "We were so low on people that we needed them to dig the trenches, and we offered them wages to do so." "They said no." "They said, "France is no longer in the war." ""We no longer have the right to dig trenches."" "You see..." "the kind of attitude they had." "Their desire to get out was almost spiteful." "As for what would become of England, they didn't give a care." "That's the kind of attitude they had." "They felt that it was inconceivable that the English succeed where the French army had been beaten." "On June 17, 1940, the steam liner Le Massilia, headed from Bordeaux to Morocco." "Several parliamentarians were aboard." "This event caused much ink to flow." "I boarded Le Massilia without suspecting that it was a big trap." "Those who stayed behind in Bordeaux quickly understood that they could exploit the circumstances," "and influence the public to think that the departure of the boat and the fact that a number of politicians were aboard, was a sign we were panicking, running away, abandoning them." "In other words, deserting." "The people aboard Le Massilia who actually wanted to fight were quickly judged to be cowards who were fleeing the fight." "It was paradoxical that some of us, including [Pierre] Viénot, Jean Zay, [Alex] Wiltzer and I, were tried for desertion, when in fact their original plan had been to go and fight." "And as far as I was concerned, I was almost obliged to go, seeing as my unit had gone, and it was my duty to follow them." "Everyone wound up in Rabat." "There were tons of people." "Once there, I went to lunch at "Balima", Rabat's best restaurant, where everyone met." "One of my cousins, Du Jonchay, a pilot, was there, and naturally we discussed what had happened." "He showed me Pierre Mendés-France, who was sitting at a table with a lovely woman, who was his wife." "My cousin turned to me and said," ""Our State Secretary there is responsible for our defeat."" "There he sat, our little lieutenant, drinking champagne." "That champagne completely infuriated me." "I walked up to him, and told him this was no attitude to have, after being defeated, drinking champagne in public as if he was delighted" "about what had happened." "Then what?" "I told him if I saw him again, I would kick him out." "And I gave him my card." " It caused quite a stir." " You were picking a fight." "No, I simply gave him my card to let him know who I was." "Not to hide my identity." "How did he react?" "He got up, stood to attention, and said nothing." "I was a captain, he was a lieutenant." "I SEE." "There was surrender and treason." "But anti-Semitism had also begun to rear its ugly head." "Many who used to hide their feelings openly declared their anti-Semitism to the point that France began adopting certain German values, and sought to get closer to Hitler, in the hope of creating a Europe where France and Germany would collaborate" "and obviously anti-Semitism became a common element between many Germans and Frenchmen." "And, of course, Jean Zay and I had the misfortune of being Jewish." "Actually, I was Jewish." "Jean Zay was only partly Jewish." "He had converted, as had his father, but he was of Jewish origin." "This didn't detract from the atrocious campaign against him, which, as you know, ended in his being killed." "Jean Zay was arrested." "His pregnant wife was in Casablanca." "She had a very tough time to find a hospital bed, or even someone willing to help her give birth." "There was such hatred." "When clinics or hospitals heard that she was Jean Zay's wife, they didn't have the courage to admit her." "You can't imagine how rampant sectarianism had become." "In any case, Mrs Zay's pregnancy was certainly a very trying time." "She lived with my wife and they spent many long hours together during which they were abused and insulted." "My wife also had a very rough time of it." "Anyhow," "Madeleine Zay eventually gave birth to this baby, whom I had the opportunity to meet, as I was arrested shortly after the baby's birth, and when I was transferred to Clermont-Ferrand, where I met up with Jean Zay, I'd seen his daughter and he hadn't." "JEAN ZAY To Appear in Court Tomorrow" "The committing magistrate was Colonel Leprêtre." "I don't want to name names, but this man's reputation lives on today." "The man was very intelligent, very bright, clever and cunning, but he had a very perverse side to him, in that he harboured great hate for the accused, especially if the accused was left-wing." "He got a certain morbid pleasure from seeing an important man accused." "Even outside of cross-examination, he would sometimes visit the prison, just to sit and chat with the prisoners." "He would go in their cells, and sit on their beds, pretending to speak with them simply." "He clearly got a great deal of pleasure out of holding the fates of such formerly important men in his hands." "There was something very sick, very odd about it." "A strange man." "So he would confess to certain things in moments of relaxation?" "One day, he said to me, "I know what you think of me."" "The man was bright enough to understand." "Very intelligent." "He said to me, "I know what you think of me," ""but in an organised society, there are certain tasks," ""tasks which must be done, and which require people to do them."" ""Every society needs bin men." He chose that word." "Were you able to emphasise the racial and political background and motives to the trial?" "No, our main concern was to obtain satisfying results, and we knew that these judges wouldn't appreciate such arguments." "Even if we had said that his being Jewish should have nothing to do with the trial, we knew perfectly well that it would be a major issue." "The hearing was extremely tense." "It began at 9am with an introduction by Pierre Mendés-France, which the Colonel received with obvious contempt." "He had been given a table and a jug of water." "He began with the following introductory statement:" ""Colonel and gentlemen, I am Jewish, I am a Freemason," ""but I am not a deserter." "May the trial begin."" "The court was presided over by a rather frenzied man, called Colonel Perret, a colonel in charge of tanks, who harboured a particular hatred for General de Gaulle," "because they had served in Saint Cyr together and were both competitive." "He hated anything to do with de Gaulle, Gaullism or Gaullists." "Furthermore, he was a very frenzied character, who ran the hearings in an atrocious manner." "My sentence was nothing compared to the death sentences he gave out." "He was responsible for executions, which is considerably worse than the sentence he gave me." "I must say that those present at the hearing were extremely hostile." "The audience had been rigged, no two ways about it." "Women whose faces were filled with hate." "I won't name any names, but they were hateful people, people who were hoping for the cruellest of sentences, who were hoping I'd be killed immediately, who didn't think I should even be allowed to defend myself." "Some 300 or 400 entry cards had been delivered, but only six were for the defence." "The cards were quite a story." "As only a limited number existed, and they were in high demand, a new black market developed." "There were bistros in Clermont that hawked the cards." "Flatteringly enough, they were very expensive, twenty francs for the show." "It cost more than the cinema." "There's no denying that public opinion was strongly influenced by the papers at that time, which felt that the politicians who were accused should automatically be declared guilty." "My colonel, my lieutenant-colonel and my general all took the stand and said, "He didn't desert."" "When the commissioner, whose name I won't give either, stood up and announced in a choked voice that he was sentenced to six years for desertion," "Mendés told him, "Sir, I'm sure you'll be rewarded." ""You've served the master well."" "Former State Secretary Sentenced to Six Years in Jail for Desertion" "I don't know if Rochat told you that a man came to see him the next day." "And this man told him, "I'm a Pétain supporter," ""and I am appalled by what happened yesterday." "It's scandalous." ""The Marshal must not be aware that such things are happening." ""The Marshal must be informed of such goings-on." ""I saw you stenograph the hearing." Which indeed he had." ""Could you get a copy for me to bring to the Marshal himself?"" "Rochat gave him a copy which he took to the Marshal." "Naturally, nothing ever came of it." "But the man who took the copy was a certain Mr Giscard d'Estaing." "It is these children, the pupils of French schools, in whom the Marshal sees hope for our country." "He has come to speak simply, as only he can, in a modest school in the town of Périgny." "You may sit down now." "You don't have to stand to listen." "Young pupils of our French schools, the reason I wanted to speak to you today on this day as you begin a new school year, is that it's important for you to know that I am counting on you" "to help me rebuild our country, France." "So work hard, stand firm, and do your best." "All rise." "To arms, citizens!" "Form your batallions!" "We march, we march!" "Let impure blood water our furrows!" "I had to pass through Vichy to reach my posting in Billancourt in the first two weeks of August 1940." "Many people told me that Marshal Pétain was very tired, and was only lucid for two hours a day." "Imagine my surprise when I met this man, who, although elderly, stood bolt upright, with his look of steel, which many people have commented on, and with the greatest of ease, politely asked me to sit down and make myself comfortable," "then said, "Mr Lamirand, there's been much talk about you here."" "The secretary general of youth, Mr Georges Lamirand recently visited Lavalette camp, the main goal of which is to train the men of tomorrow." "He visited these young men who are united by a common ideal, and live life in continual contact with nature, work and simplicity, these values upon which we must rebuild our country." "We talked and I thought to myself," ""What bad luck." ""They say he's only lucid two hours a clay, and I chance upon those."" "The problems of youth are fascinating, but I had absolutely no idea that, in the position Marshal Pétain wanted to grant me, there were so many fascinating subjects and problems to solve." "Repeat after me:" "Long live France!" "Long live the Marshal!" "Louis Renault finally agreed to give me leave, saying to Pétain, "I'll lend him to you for a month."" "and Marshal Pétain, in his infinite cleverness," ""Fine, one month." ""But if you don't mind, let's make the job renewable."" "and he renewed it 30 months." "Mr Lamirand is inaugurating an exhibition of drawings sent to Pétain by French schoolchildren." "The little ones wanted to answer the Marshal's call, they wanted to show the Marshal their towns, villages and homes, hence sharing a piece of their daily lives with him." "A school girl, perhaps the youngest in France, had the luck of being allowed to give Pétain her lovingly written letter in person." "It was about adding a new element to the famous triptych of the time:" "Work, Family, Nation." "Honour your work, your family, and your nation." "A national revolution?" "You said it." "Marshal Pétain has already told you several times what he meant by social revolution." "He feels that our social system is unfair." "There is too much poverty, too much injustice." "And that is what he wants to change." "He is bound and determined to bring happiness to France, and asks us all to join in a communal effort." "Dear friends, this is his social revolution." "That was when he started planning his escape." "He grew his beard, shaved it off, grew it out again, and one fine clay, he left." "I must admit I'm not very athletic, but I prepared myself by working out for several months beforehand." "I was high up, so I had to jump off a high wall." "But I had to run the risk." "And once I had jumped, I would be a free man again." "Just as I was about to jump..." "There were trees planted along the avenue." "I heard the unexpected sound of voices." "I tried to see in the semi-darkness." "There was a couple sitting under a tree." "You can imagine what they were discussing." "He knew what he wanted, but she hadn't decided yet." "It seemed to last an eternity to me." "She ended up saying yes, but I had the impression she had put up a great deal of resistance." "Finally, they left, and so I jumped." "And let me assure you that I was even happier than he was." "I'd really like to meet him some clay and let him know how much I experienced with the two of them that night." "How you admired his audacity." "Yes, and how her lack of audacity struck me as being so untimely." "Anyway, love, fate and escape eventually won the day." "Did you disguise yourself?" "I was disguised, but not very well." "You see, many people back then who wanted to disguise themselves would let their beards grow." "So, bearded men automatically aroused suspicion!" "I let my moustache grow," "I gave myself a new hairstyle, parted straight down the middle." "I got a pair of glasses." "And of course, I changed the way I dressed and so forth." "The next day, I went for my daily visit with him, to see if he had escaped or not." "I arrived and saw all these people with decametres in hand, taking all sorts of measurements." "They were hysterical." "They asked me what I wanted." "I said I was there to see my client." "They asked if I knew Pierre Mendés-France had left." "I said no." "I burst out laughing, which made them angry." "They carried out a huge security check of all the roads and trains." "But my plan was to not contact anyone, to not count on anyone, to be cut off from everything and everyone." "I must say that life in France at that time is very difficult to imagine, and even more so to describe." "You had an old pair of shoes you hoped would last." "If they got a hole, there was no leather to fix them." "There were no plates, there were no matches, there was nothing." "It is very difficult, in hindsight, to describe what it was like living in a country where everyone was always searching for everything." "The new rage in Paris is silk stockings without the silk." "All you have to do, ladies, is dye your legs." "It's easy and practical, a great idea." "The ladies are trading in their garters for paintbrushes." "Worried about what will happen when you bathe?" "No problem." "Paint-on stockings are waterproof." "On top of that, Elizabeth Arden guarantees they won't run!" "That's a Parisian habit which will disappear." "Where is France headed?" "Where is Europe headed?" "Some 3,000 people in Chaillot will hear" "Mr Alphonse de Chateaubriant discuss The French Drama." "At this very moment, a huge continental unit is slowly taking shape." "It will be one gigantic geographical piece in the puzzle, with one single political and economical doctrine, stretching to the very tip of Europe, the very tip of which is France." "Therein the importance of France becomes clear, as France becomes, in this new division, the outer edge, the last bastion on the Atlantic of this immense continent, faced with another large continent, America," "which is ready to take over the ancient order of things, the ancient riches and capitalist creeds, the ancient gold and the ancient man, in order to make it their last refuge, their last fortress, and their last army." "I sincerely hope that everything I have said tonight will give the word "collaboration" new meaning in your eyes." "It's not surprising that, at first, such poison won over many new converts." "Little by little, people began to realise it was propaganda, and to see that the government was practicing a policy, which they themselves called collaboration with the enemy." "Slowly but surely, people began to open their eyes, and change their minds." "But this propaganda still won over many new converts." "You know as well as I do that anti-Semitism and Anglophobia are never hard to stir up in France." "Even if reactions to such things are dormant or stifled, all it takes is one event, one incident, one international crisis or one Dreyfus affair, for feelings we thought long gone to suddenly re-emerge in full force," "for beliefs we thought dead to be simply dormant." "Edouard Drumont was the first in France to examine the Jewish question." "The Institute of Jewish Questions celebrates his memory today." "Mr Laville has agreed to say a few words." "Out of 100 Frenchmen of old stock, at least 90 are pure white, free of any other racial mixture." "This isn't true of the Jews." "The Jews are born of a mixture which dates back thousands of years, between Aryans, Mongols and Negroes." "Therefore, Jews have unique faces, bodies, attitudes and gestures." "It is reassuring to see that the public is interested in studying the characteristics presented in the morphological section of "Jews and France"." "In October '40, when I came home on leave," "I heard that a good friend of mine, a teacher, wasn't allowed to keep teaching that autumn, because his mother was Jewish, making him half-Jewish." "I'd met Jews before, but I treated them the same as Catholics, Protestants, or people with no religion in particular." "It wasn't a revolution yet, but it did give me food for thought." " Did you have any Jewish teachers?" " Let me see..." "We did have one." "Yes, he was fired." "The same old story." "No one ever told us anything." "Listen, I think we should make a little nuance here." "I think that when you take cases like this teacher we mentioned," "I think that we tried, to the best of our ability, to get these people some work tutoring and so forth." "We did that for another colleague, too." "Like you say, it wasn't much, but we did have sympathy for them." "Did you really try?" "Did every single teacher in Clermont hand in their resignation?" "No way." "You've no idea what the mentality was like back then." "Collective resignation?" "Come on!" "In 1940, Vichy came out with the Jewish decrees." "In the small ads of Le Moniteur, a local merchant announced that he was 100% pure French." "Sir, are you Marius?" "Yes, I'm Marius." "You're weighed down with medals." "I fought in World War I." " They're all medals from WWI?" " That's right." "You must be a very brave man." "I followed the others." "I did my duty." "When France was demobilised, when France was defeated in the 2nd war, how did you react?" "We certainly weren't very happy." "As veterans of World War I, the defeat affected us deeply." "Were there many Jewish stores?" "Yes, there were." "So you must have seen a lot?" "You could say that." "They all packed up their bags and left." "They went into exile." "And there weren't any arrests?" "There were arrests everywhere." "And you saw them?" "Yes, unfortunately." "Tell me, when what were called "the Jewish decrees" came out, apparently you took out an ad." "That's correct." "It was an ad in Le Moniteur." "You're certainly well-informed." "You see, sir, we were four brothers." "It was the solution I found, as people thought we were Jews." "My name, Klein, sounds quite Jewish." "But I'm a Catholic." "And this was a real source of concern." "I had some problems because of that." "Four of my brothers fought in the war." "It was important that I tell people that I am really French." "In other words, you wanted your clients to know you weren't Jewish." "That is correct." "Why?" "Because some said I was Jewish." "Jews were being arrested, and they said we were Jewish." "Do you see?" "I couldn't very well allow myself to be labelled as a Jew since I'm a Catholic." "So that's why, as you said, I took out an ad." "Four of my brothers fought in the war." "One was killed." " The other three were imprisoned." " But Jews fought in World War I, too." "That's true." "I realise that." "I've never been a racist." "Jewish or Mahometan, all that mattered to me was that the man did his duty, in which case, he was as French as the rest of us." "You understand?" "You weren't high on the priority list of those persecuted by Hitler's regime." "But did you know any Jews, Communists, or Freemasons who were?" "I met more Jews than I'll ever meet again." "I had two girls working at the pharmacy, who were considered to be evil just because they were Jewish." "One was the daughter of an amazing man, a Parisian polytechnician." "She was a pretty amazing girl herself." "The other was the daughter of Hirsch, a colleague in Strasbourg." "Nobody wanted anything to do with these girls." "He had warned every pharmacy in Clermont not to hire these girls." " Who is "he?"" " The pharmacy inspector." "The film industry gave them a chance to steal billions of francs." "Tannenzaft, better known as Nathan, who in the eyes of the world, was the ultimate symbol of French cinema, has cost the public nearly 700,000,000 francs." "Mr Pierre Mendés-France, did you enjoy going to the cinema back then?" "I went to the cinema because I enjoyed it, but I had yet another reason, as I had quickly discovered that cinemas provided a refuge which was both fun and comfortable, you could sit down in a cinema at 3:00 in the afternoon," "and stay there in the darkness for hours on end, without anyone ever seeing you." "It was a great hiding place." "In many pre-war French films, there were Jewish actors or Jewish directors." "And in the credits of these films, the Jewish names had been erased." "Today World News was able to film a part of the trial of the Jew Tannenzaft, Bernard Nathan." "Our presence clearly disturbed the accused who wanted his privacy." "He raises an objection, but is overruled by the court." "Go away." "Leave me alone." "This is a tragedy, not a comedy!" "The Germans were discreet about it, but they wanted to see their films." "There were operettas." "There were the first films in colour." "Some, like La Ville Dorée, weren't propaganda, others were." "Films like Le Juif Suss were pure propaganda." "And the thing that I found most revolting was that they weren't only German productions, which would have been understandable since they had occupied us, but that they were made with the blessing of the French authorities," "on behalf of French organisations, dubbed by French actors." "The events in this film are based on historical fact." "At first, audiences probably thought these films were just like any other German film." "But people very quickly began to realise that it was just typical propaganda, in the worst sense of the word." "This led to a kind of strike among viewers." "Even those who weren't especially interested in the Free French, who had got into the habit of seeing normal German films, were extremely revolted and refused to have any part in it." "Gentlemen, this Jew's criminal record shows nothing of the suffering of our people during his tyranny." "This is why I give the floor to the person who has suffered most." "I ask for nothing." "You are the judges, not me." "Please, Sturm, you are the one with the most right to judge him." "It is not my decision to take." "Suffering is too subjective." "It would be unfair." "However, I see an ancient article of criminal law which applies:" ""If ever a Jew commits a sin..." ""If ever a Jew commits a sin of the flesh with a Christian woman," ""he shall be publicly hung without further ado."" ""If ever a Jew commits a sin of the flesh with a Christian," ""he shall be publicly hung without further ado," ""as punishment, and as an example for all others."" "Have mercy!" "I've done nothing wrong!" "I've always acted in the name of my saviour!" "It's not my fault that your duke wanted to betray you!" "I can fix everything, I swear." "Everything!" "Take all that I own." "Take all my money." "But don't take my life!" "I am innocent!" "I'm just a poor Jew." "Let me live." "I want to live!" "I want to live!" "Live!" "The State Council and I speak for all Wurttembergers in decreeing that all Jews must leave Wurttemberg in the next three days." "This is valid across the entire country." "This decree has been taken in Stuttgart on February 4, 1738." "May our descendants remember this, for in doing so, they will spare themselves much pain and suffering, and will keep their blood pure of the influence of this accursed race." "THE END" "There were only certain people who actually enjoyed Le Juif Suss, the anti-Semites who saw their beliefs confirmed in the film." "The collaborators would also see it." "Then there were those who were taken by surprise." "I'd say that 80% of the people who came to see Le Juif Suss assumed it would be just like any other light-hearted film." "The German films weren't particularly good." "However, they featured many French film stars, as Continental had made many French films before the war." "Tino Rossi and the like filmed at Continental." "As an artistic endeavour, several actors are off to Germany." "At the Gare de l'Est, we've spotted Albert Préjean," "Danielle Darrieux," "Suzy Delair," "Junie Astor," "Viviane Romance." "Dr Karl Frohlich, president of the German Cinema Corporation, has invited them on a 12-day studio tour of Vienna, Munich and Berlin." "Paris." "The arrival of Mr Heydrich, SS general, head of security, the Reich's Prague representative, asked by Mr Himmler, SS and police chief, to officially install Mr Oberg in his new post in occupied territory." "Mr Heydrich is president of the International Criminal Police, a commission to which France has always belonged." "Mr Heydrich visited Mr Bousquet, secretary general of the police, and Mr Hiller, secretary general of administration." "He also had a chance to see Mr Dartier de Pellepoix, in charge of Jewish Questions, as well as Mr de Brinon." "What was Paris like back then?" "There were two sides to Paris." "There were those struggling to survive, and there was high society." "All we were missing was Régine." "There's no doubt about it." "Everyone's ashamed to say it today, but for some, life in Paris was great." "Maxim's and Le Boeuf sur le Toit did a booming business." "The film industry was in full swing." "From what I've heard, actually, or so they say," "French films were so good then because a certain category of producers had fled to the States." "Many directors have gone on to do very well in their careers, but they forget what they said then." "Paris was a fun and crazy place." "Let me assure you that there were some wild and crazy times back then." "All right, boys." "This way." "We'll go straight to the source to wet our whistles." "What happened to you in 1937?" "You can't even begin to imagine." " It's a long story." " Be careful..." "First give us a drink, then we'll see what's up." "I think we're going to earn our drink today." " Is that red wine?" " Yes, it's as Red as I am." "So what happened in here?" "This cellar has seen everything." "The Resistance in Auvergne began here." "The night the first weapons arrived, we met in this very cellar, and we sang the Internationale." "We weren't Communists, but as Pétain sang the Marseillaise, we had to sing the Internationale." "You see, people attended the raising of the colours reluctantly." " Yet they still came?" " They had no choke." "It is in times like those when you begin to realise" "what people are really like." " How do you mean?" " They were scared stiff." "With only a few exceptions." " Was it really a risk not to come?" " Risk or no risk, they still came." " So they thought there was a risk?" " They thought so." "I was under the impression that there were quite a few students here who ardently supported General de Gaulle." "For example, there was the son of a colleague whose name escapes me, among others." "What about among the teachers?" "I really can't say how many teachers supported him." "We were sympathetic to the young people's cause, but there wasn't the same enthusiasm... the same enthusiasm which was gaining momentum" "among the young people." "Why do you think that is?" "It often seems to be the case in life." "Young people are, in general, more sincere and more dynamic." "They don't think things through." "I think it would be fair to say that they are less cautious." "They are more open and friendly." "What do you think?" " They're not as scared." " True." "Some of my students got caught." "I can't really say who." "Not so many, just a few of them." "In fact, many of them now have streets named after them here." "There was Bacaud." "The street going to Fontgieve is named after him." " I taught this charming boy." " He was in the Resistance?" "These people, as Dionnet was saying earlier, had created a network." "We only found out about it later." "They continued to pretend they were just your average students." "But we only found out about this later." "Perhaps Dionnet, who was in the Resistance, knew." "What was it like for the others?" "How did the others react when someone's desk was empty?" "I don't know." "I can't remember." "When a student's parents were arrested, and the son showed up at school the next day, how did they react?" " I can't remember." " How can you forget?" "Can you remember?" "No, I can't." "No specific examples." "I see some examples on the wall." "Those are our former students..." "Aren't those the students who died in World War I?" "It says World War ll." "I'm trying to remember, but I can't." "Clermont-Ferrand is giving Marshal Pétain a warm welcome." "He has come to approve the constitution of the Peasants' Union, and the end of the winter crusade for National Aid." "The head of state will then receive the donations to National Aid brought by peasants from all over the region." "It is a symbolic ceremony for the French mutual aid campaign." "A great day for France as our hearts beat together in collective hope." "END OF PART 1" "Demarcation Line" " Do not cross" "On November 11th, on the French German demarcation line at 7 a.m., under orders from the FiJhrer, the Wehrmacht crossed unoccupied France to the Mediterranean." "This is a response to Anglo-American aggression in French North Africa preventing the enemy from landing on the southern coast of France." "At first, we called them the Fritzes, then the Jerries, the Krauts, the Boches, the Beetles, the Verdigris." "Public imagination was very fertile back then." "Why call them Beetles?" "Because beetles eat potatoes and leave nothing behind." "The Germans also left nothing behind." " Not even potatoes?" " No potatoes." "What can you say in French?" "I learned the rules of etiquette, greetings." "I learned to make myself understood, especially to young ladies." "To go for a walk: "Excuse me, miss, would you care to go for a walk?"" "And what else?" "Good day, sir." "Good evening, sir." "Good night, ma'am." "MISS..." "This afternoon, there were concerts in the occupied cities." "THE SORROW AND THE PITY" "Chronicle of a French city under the Occupation" "Part 2:" "THE CHOICE" " Best of three?" " OK." "Of course, races were rare then." "In 1940, racing was almost obsolete." "It was only in 1941, 1942, and 1943 that racing really began." "I started in 1943." " In 1943?" " That's right." "I started in 1943 in the Dunlop final with Bobet." " We were in the same class." " Is that right?" "The class of '45 was pretty big." "There was Casara, Lazaridés, Bobet..." "You must understand that back then, and I'm talking about cycling, it was the only way people had of getting around." "You started off your adult life in a rather difficult period." "For example, what about girls?" " Girls?" " How was dating under Occupation?" "It's true that there was a problem." "First of all, we were young." "On Sundays or in the evenings, I'avenue des États-Unis was packed with people "doing the avenue," as we called it." "From the Place de Jaude to Gaillard, that was the place to be." "For a young man like yourself, was it particularly irritating to see a girl on a German soldier's arm?" " You must have seen some." " Of course." "It was considered annoying everywhere, not just in Clermont." " Of course." " It was generally frowned upon to see a woman accompanied by a German." "Some women dated Germans but they paid for that later, after the Liberation." "Some paid a very high price indeed for having dated Germans." "That's for sure." "There weren't many Germans in Clermont, as it wasn't occupied." "Weren't the Germans here as of 1942?" "No." "No, we only saw the Germans through the Resistance." "Clermont was never occupied." ""No, no, we didn't see any Germans!"" "We've been told there were very few Germans in Clermont." "I saw too many of them." "I saw them everywhere." "I saw them in my waking hours, and I saw them in my sleep." "Around their neck, they all wore ribbons with some medal attached." "I saw them everywhere." "All I could see was helmets and Germans." "How come others didn't see them?" "They must have been short-sighted because Lord knows they were everywhere." "You couldn't miss them." "I had participated in the Russian campaign." "In January 1942, I was hurt." "My feet froze." "I was declared unfit for service in the East which is why I returned to France that same year." "Service in France was humiliating for an active serviceman like me." "For us, the East was the winning ticket." "Yes, but you didn't win." "No, we didn't, but we couldn't have known that." "The major of my regime understood my feelings." "He said to me," ""My dear Tausend, all you have to do is play the fool," ""and you'll be back in no time."" "But it didn't work, so I stayed in Clermont-Ferrand till the end." " Why?" "Couldn't you play stupid?" " No, I wasn't very good at that." "In late 1942, everything was quiet in Clermont." "We were busy training new recruits, especially for anti-partisan operations." "The people in Clermont liked us." "We got along." "French or German, it made no difference to them." "My friends and I lived in a hotel in Royat." "I think I still have some photos." "Royat is north of Clermont-Ferrand." "I had to put up with them." "But I must say that as far as hotel guests go, I can't complain." "You say that you had to put up with them." " Were they hard to put up with?" " No, it wasn't that." "No, it's just that they kept me from working." "I would have preferred real guests." "After all, I wasn't paid." "As German soldiers, we were able to get whatever we wanted." "Cheese, ham, salami..." "Everything was available on the black market." "Did you ever get the feeling that the people you patronised, for example, shopkeepers, hoteliers and the like, were compromising themselves in the eyes of other Frenchmen?" "Not at all." "At least, not in 1942." "The situation somewhat deteriorated later, when the so-called "war of partisans" began." "I think I have a photo of that period, in early 1943 when we had to put up barbed wire." "For example, in broad daylight, they threw grenades at our soldiers who were marching to one of our cinemas." "I don't know if they were thrown from rooftops or what." "But there were eight dead and 40 wounded." "An hour before the 6:00 show, they came along accompanied by armed sentries." "The soldiers were unarmed, but the sentries were armed." "Then the terrorists threw the bombs from high up on the city walls." "You can see them there." "The wounded fell, the ambulances came and the show went on." "A terrible retaliation followed." "They burned down upper Clermont in search of terrorists." "Many young men were taken." "Now obviously, we had to do something about the situation." "The partisans had, of course, disappeared." "Did you know that many people were arrested on the Place de Jaude, many young people who were deported?" "No, I didn't realise that." "All I know is that there was a Gestapo unit in Clermont which terrified the French." "Or so they always told us." "But they were there to protect us." "The Germans around here would always tell us the same old story." "German-French co-operation is the solution, they'd say." "They were convinced of it." "I don't know." " Maybe they were sincere." " It's possible." "I don't know." "They were almost too nice, yes, too nice because they knew we didn't like them, so they tried hard." "They'd almost always give their seat in a tram to an elderly passenger." "And what about girls?" "One night, Mrs Mioche, who was always very strict on the subject saw a soldier come in after midnight with two young ladies." "Mrs Mioche wouldn't let the girls in." "As they continued insisting, she went and got their captain." "The captain came down and said Mrs Mioche was right." " They must not have been very happy." " No." "But what could they say?" "He was their captain." "They had to obey." "And Mrs Mioche was happy with the outcome of the situation." " So she was happy..." " Yes, but she was still afraid that they would come in anyhow." " She told them, "This isn't a..."" " A brothel." "And the next day, they requisitioned a house across the street, hence solving their problem." "As is always the case in a war, when soldiers are far from home brothels were set up." "There were many in Clermont-Ferrand." "The Clermont girls wouldn't give us the time of day on the streets." "And when you weren't on the streets?" "It's true that they were much friendlier at night." "The situation deteriorated when the Michelin factory was bombed." "You know, the famous French tyre factory, which worked for us." "The Americans aimed badly and dropped their bombs everywhere." "And naturally, people blamed us." "I think by late 1942, early 1943, the Resistance was busy everywhere." "English pilots would bomb France." "Didn't that bother you?" "No, they didn't bomb people, they bombed German-occupied factories and that's all." "We were at war." "We were allies against the Germans." "It was the point of the Resistance." "I even had to sign a contract in London." "I was registered in London." "I still remember my registration number: 61,055." "I was registered in London." "The last time I actually flew in one of these was in May 1944 when we were shot down over occupied France." " Is it harder to get in one today?" " I have put on a couple of stone." "You don't look very French." "Did you have a moustache back then?" "No, this is the point." "I did have a moustache but I was asked to shave it off as there didn't seem to be many Frenchmen with moustaches about." "They supplied me with an old jacket, not exactly Savile Row style, but it served its purpose..." "And a beret." "We cut the tops off our boots to make shoes." "Did you find the people of France helpful?" "Certainly." "People would risk their lives for you." "They knew if the Germans got them, they would be shot without a trial." "I remember Mr Saugay, who put me up for quite some time." "I didn't know cigarettes were so rare in France." "In England, there were lots." "But he gave me 20 cigarettes a clay:" "Gauloises." "Sometimes, I'd even ask for more." "I only realised he was a smoker, too when I saw him one night cleaning up the ashtrays and smoking my cigarette stubs." " We'd go to the woods." " Over there." "Over there, in the woods." " And where did you keep the weapons?" " 'm my father's house, over there." "That's where we'd clean the weapons we received." " How about hiding places?" " There were some in the woods." "There were some in the vineyards, in the woods" " and over there." " I bet there are still some around." "This isn't a very big area, so how did you manage?" "People must have found out." "What was the reaction of villagers who weren't in the Resistance?" " Well, they..." " They shut their mouths." "They kept very quiet." "First, I was taken by the police then I was taken to Clermont and then I was put in prison." "First, I was put in the Clermont prison and then I was taken to the prison in La Mélisse." " But I only stayed one clay, then I..." " You should've stayed in Clermont." "Next, I was taken to 2 bis." "I was sent twice in one day, and again the next day, and the next." " I went five times." " Were you tortured?" " Were you beaten?" " It was no party, let me tell you." "These gentlemen had found twelve parachutes in our house and they wanted to know how this came to be." " But you didn't say?" " No." "I was liberated, we were liberated, in full flight." "They'd been making us walk for three days when the Germans abandoned us in a little region." "I'll never forget it." "It was called Itsdorf, in Saxony, by the Elbe." " Do you have any old photos?" " No, I was too ugly." "No one wanted to take my picture." " Why?" "How much did you weigh?" " 92 pounds." " Why didn't you take any pictures?" " I didn't want to." "I didn't think anyone should see me like that." " You were waiting to be..." " More handsome." "Yes, I saw a lot of suffering." "I saw a convoy arrive." "I think it came from Hungary." "Out of 50,000 people, not one..." "I remember I was designated to bring them some soup." "They were close to the cinema." "There was a cinema, a brothel, and everything in Buchenwald." "It's the truth." "I brought them this soup, and they fell upon it." "All 50,000 of them literally fell upon this soup spilling it everywhere." "They were down on their knees in the mud." "There must have been at least eight inches of mud on the ground." "Well, they ate out of the mud." "And four days later, they were all gunned down." "That was Buchenwald." "Did you notice any difference between the various levels of French society?" "Most definitely." "I can honestly say that the people who helped me most were the railway workers." "And, though it's hard to admit now, the Communists." "French workers were wonderful people." "They would do anything." "They'd give you their last penny." "I stayed with these people, I stayed in one room." "There was only one room and a kitchen, and I slept in the kitchen in a town called Juvisy, near Paris." "It was extremely dangerous territory back then." "They would lend me some overalls because every day, I'd walk along and copy down the various electric train lines because we wanted to bomb them." "This wasn't really my job." "My job was the radio." "But I helped the others when things were going slowly." "And so they lent me their overalls." "You've mentioned the workers, but what about the French bourgeoisie" " from what you've seen of them?" " The bourgeoisie..." "I must say, were very neutral." "They didn't help me much." "No, not the bourgeoisie." "I was impressed by the people, the waiters in the restaurants, the cashiers in the grocery shops." "There were always go-betweens in these shops, but I don't know if they knew what they were doing." "And we never explained what the danger was." "But the workers were always able to provide me with what I needed, whereas the bourgeoisie was scared." "They had more to lose." "And I think that in life, no matter where you go people often consider what they have to lose." "I had nothing to lose." "That's why I did it." "I had no parents, I wasn't married, so what did it matter?" "Denis Rake was a boy." "Actually, he's older than I am." "He was a guy who had faith." "He was very patriotic, with a very deep sense of duty." "He was amazingly brave." "He was incredibly shy, and he hated firearms, but we needed people like him, as they were brave enough to overcome their fear." "It's true that deep down inside," "I wanted to prove that I was just as brave as my friends who had become pilots and so forth." "And as a homosexual, at that moment in my life it was one of my fears that I'd lack the courage to do such things." "In that sense, you shared the prejudice of others." "You felt that being homosexual would make you less brave than the others?" "Yes, I was afraid of that." " Afraid?" " Yes." "Do you think the fact that you were a man of the theatre made you more inclined" " to go underground?" " Very much so." "I was a transvestite singer in Paris in "Le Grand Ecart" for three months, and in "La Cave Caucasienne" for a long time." "We supplied the group we had formed with parachutes from London with the aim of preventing the passage of German troops." "And we sent Denis Rake as a radio operator." ""The Mont Mouchet," like most of the Maquis groups consisted of members from the forced labour group which was based in Auvergne." "What we didn't know was that on the night Denis Rake arrived in France, the Germans made an all-out attack" "and Denis Rake landed smack in the middle of the battle." "He spent the night in a tree, which he climbed down the next day in order to send us a message saying he'd arrived rather unexpectedly and that all was well." "Gaspar was in charge of the Maquis." "I must say that I'm very proud of my pseudonym "Gaspar"" "because friends, as you saw earlier wouldn't have called me Mr Coulaudon." "Coulaudon is a well-known name, but in my job, it doesn't matter." "It's an everyday name 30 years later." "Our mission was to find a Maquis led by a man named Gaspar." " In Mont Mouchet?" " That's right." "He was an incredible man, and he put up an impressive fight." "But he was greedy:" "greedy for glory, greedy for everything." "We had the feeling that Gaspar had won the approval, the love and affection of the people the patriots that followed him, an unquestionably great leader." "This is where the Resistance began in Auvergne." "This is where we formed our first group." "Back then, we had a dog we had named de Gaulle." "De Gaulle latched on to us and stuck with us during both winters." "What is that monument?" "It was built in memory of our first man to be killed." "When the Germans surrounded the village, we couldn't get in because of the snow." "We were all on exercise, except four young men who stayed behind because they hadn't healed." "And these four young men were taken by the Germans." "Early that morning, they followed the less snowy train tracks checked out the lie of the land and headed to our cottage, thinking they'd get us all." "There were four young men, one of whom came out barefoot in the snow, a 19-year-old boy from Volvic, a village we'll see later." "We called him Milamon." "A relative of his, Jean Lainé, tried to machine-gun down the Germans, who then killed him." "We found his body strewn across the snow." "He died immediately." "A second boy was killed in his bed." "He didn't even have time to get up before being taken." "There were two young men left." "One hid in a trunk, he was so small." "He was 19 years old." " What was the boy's name again?" " Chevalier." "No, it was Fifteen Grams." "Fifteen Grams or Four Pounds." "Fifteen Grams." "That was all the boy weighed." "He was also taken here." "One thing I find appalling is when people who were Pétain supporters come up and tell me what they did for the Resistance." "Sometimes, it's unreal." ""Oh Mr Gaspar," ""if only you knew what we did, what I did for the Resistance..."" "Go ahead, pal, tell me all about it." "I try to stay calm." "I'm a salesman and I want to sell my product." "The company doesn't pay me to do politics and pick fights." "So sometimes I find myself obliged to listen to a song and dance of some guy who shows me a drawer and gets his wife to confirm that there was indeed a revolver in that drawer during the war a revolver which he was supposedly ready to use on the Germans." "Only he never actually used it." "History doesn't lie." "As you know, I was a non-commissioned officer in the French army." "I can see your question coming." "Didn't I skip a few ranks?" "But what could I have done?" "In fact, one man, a friend of mine was saying in the car earlier," ""Didn't you go to school?" No, I laughed." "The best I did, in the words of the former mayor of Combronde was the school of crime, which is nothing more than our mandatory answer to those who were killing our friends." " There's one thing you're forgetting." " What?" "When de Gaulle, from London, invited every French officer, every last lazy good-for-nothing to join the Maquis, if they had answered his call..." "If they had, the Resistance could have avoided certain mistakes." "They were hiding in the woods like children from the Germans." "They didn't want to work for them." "These admirable patriots could definitely have used the help and leadership of the French officers who were busy warming their feet by the fire..." "Don't try to deny it." "I know many people who are guilty." "That's the truth." "Many people I knew just stayed at home." "I asked them, at the time, why they didn't follow their friends' lead." "They claimed they didn't know how to get in touch with the Resistance." "Somehow, an old fool like me knew how and they didn't." "If we could do it again, would you still make me a colonel, or would you bring me down to staff sergeant or adjutant?" "If I've understood correctly, Colonel Gaspar wants to know if 25 years down the road, you'd still be willing to trust him." "Exactly." "I believe that it's because of men like him that we accomplished something." "No thanks to those who stayed home." " Mark my words." " This isn't a referendum here." "He mixes everything up." "I'm trying to talk politics." "But it's what I wanted to hear." "Today, a new type of neo-Nazism is slowly rearing its ugly head which is why I feel it's important we participate in these interviews." "We said "nyet" because we thought and continue to think that we must not mix things up, as the veterans of Verdun have done." "Those men were heroes, but they've been caught in a trap." "I believe there's a risk that either Nazism will re-emerge, or some form of Nazism under a different name." "A rose by any other name is still a rose." "Hang on a minute." "There's one thing we often tend to forget." "The Germans were Nazis." "Fine." "But were the French any better than the Nazis?" " Stop it." " I had a woman shot, a 60-year-old woman who had sold me to the Gestapo." "She sold me for money." "So did my son, for thirty pieces of silver." "The people in Auvergne, in a country where we unwisely took risks, like in Brittany, Vercors, or anywhere else who wanted to find the Resistance had no problem finding it, if that person really wanted to fight," "or even to fight in the underground without necessarily going all out." "Our goal, first and foremost, was to attempt to create a climate of psychological fear for the Germans to keep them in a state of fear to cut off communications lines, and hopefully blow everything up." "That was it." "The goal wasn't to kill the Germans." "Why bother killing 10, 20, 50, or even 100 Germans?" "Come on." "Please." "Not at all." "Our goal was basically to prevent them..." "If you don't mind, I'd like to add something." "Our goal was never to be an army facing another army." "And yet, what eventually happened, due to ever-increasing enthusiasm, was that we ended up with 10,000 armed men." "Allow me to give an example." "A detachment of our troops near Clermont passes in front of 20-odd peasants digging up potatoes." "Suddenly, they all drop their tools, dash towards their guns and proceed to shoot 14 of our men dead." " Do you consider that a partisan war?" " No." "For me, partisans are people who wear armbands, helmets and the like." "What happened in that potato field was assassination." "You must admit that we were obliged to react." "I'd even say that it was our duty, as officers to demand security measures for our troops." "After Liberation, I was given the task of guarding German prisoners." "I supervised a whole unit, but I never hurt them and I never yelled at them." "If I'd treated them the way they'd treated me" "I wouldn't have been any better than them." "And I didn't want that." "These old guys were all veterans from WWI, the Shupo, the police." "What could we possibly do with men like that?" "They hadn't hurt us." "The people who had hurt us had taken off at high speed." "They were long gone." "But these old guys had clone us no harm." "I remember one of these men had broken his gun." "This man gave me an apple as we were marching." "We'd been marching for three days, and as we walked along, the old guy slipped me an apple." "See what I mean?" "That was the day we'd had one loaf of bread for 22 men." "In the afternoon, of that same clay, at 3:00, we were liberated." "To be a member of the Resistance, did you need political training?" " No." " What was your family background?" "My family background was always rather left wing." "I was never an extremist, but I was always left wing." " So what were you then?" " I was a Socialist." "I'm still a Socialist today." "And I'm proud of it." "Although the Party has a few people which really should be..." "They're people like me, who are getting old." "Why get 80-year-old people to govern our country?" "We should put them out to pasture." "People say that some peasants got rich during the war." "There are some." "There are some, that's for sure." "Maybe it would have been better to get rich on the black market." "Then I'd be rich and everyone would like me." "But I was in the Resistance, so they think I'm dumb." "And rightly so!" "Do you think that having been in the Resistance gives you a good or bad reputation in the minds of others?" "I think it has always given us a bad reputation." "Because when we were active, they called us terrorists" " Or bandits." " Yes, bandits." " Many people still believe this." " Some even called us profiteers." "Yes, because we did parachuting." "There were some people who claimed to be in the Resistance and took advantage of this to steal and loot." " That's why many people think..." " They were thieves." "Weren't there two types of Resistance?" "There was the anti-German side, and then the anti-Nazi side." "For us, German or Nazi, they were both the same." "They were one and the same." "I used to feel that we should distinguish between the German people and the Nazis." "But after I was taken prisoner, thrashed, and fed by catapult..." "I'm sorry, but I reacted like any hungry man and considered them one and the same." "There were some Germans who weren't Nazis in their heart." "But those Germans were in the concentration camps." "Don't forget that concentration camps opened in Germany in 1933." "All Germans were Nazis." "Any Communists in Germany were sent to the camps." "And when you met a German in a camp, it wasn't like hurting a Communist." " Did any Communists join the Nazis?" " Of course not." "But I wasn't about to ask them." "I don't speak German." "The Germans we fought in Auvergne were all Nazis." " Or members of the SS." " Nazis or members of the SS." " That was it." " Did you kill any Krauts?" "Probably, but we didn't see it." "When you are in a hole standing behind your machine gun, you don't know what you've hit." "And bad Frenchmen?" "I knew many bad Frenchmen, but I never killed any of them." " And the rest of you?" " Me neither." "I was already a black sheep, the odd man out." "I had married an American divorcée, a Grossfeld to boot." "I had done many things:" "I had smoked opium," "I had written many extraordinary articles, and I was considered a black sheep, one who would never succeed." "It's always a shock for society to see a black sheep succeed." "Despite my weakness for Communists, the day I became a minister, my family accepted me." "But what did I find in the Resistance?" "The most important thing for me, other than dignity was that it was truly a classless society." "The problems of everyday life ceased to exist." "We were very free." "What I'm going to say may sound mean, but I think that to be in the Resistance, you had to be maladjusted." "We were free in the sense that, as outcasts of society, the organisation of society no longer concerned us in the least." "You can't imagine a real Resistance activist being a full-fledged minister, or a colonel or a businessman." "Such people have succeeded." "They would succeed with Germans, Englishmen or Russians." "But we were failures and I was one of those failures." "We had quixotic feelings that are so typical of failures." "Some people are Resistants by nature." "In other words, some people are naturally headstrong." "Others, on the contrary, try to adapt to the circumstances, and get what they can out of it." "If you are a Resistant over everything and nothing, you're exaggerating." "But if you accept everything, you're lying." "There were six of us:" "a gas-company worker, a pimp, a public transport worker, a butcher from Quipavas and others like that." "On the quay of Port-Vendres," "I found men who were simply men who had fled like others had fled, like I had fled, who asked me what they could do." "I said, "Why not join the Resistance?"" "I went down along the coast until I reached, in St-Jean-de-Luz, an English ship with orders to take no Frenchmen, only a Polish division on its way to London." "So I said, "Let's go to headquarters," ""the 5th Marine Bureau, where we can do something."" "And so I went to Collioure." "The office had been set up in a brothel, because there was nothing else available in the area." "They said, "Why resist?" "You're mad."" "And they demobilised me." "I went to Marseilles, where, with a few men," "I realised we had to fight in France, not abroad." "We were all aware of the fact that we were appealing to the patriots, who saw that we were people who actually fought, whereas many other people were just full of talk about resisting." "We weren't talkers, we were fighters." "The patriots had seen the amazing gesture of a militant Communist, who was perhaps unaware of the effect this gesture would have." "Just before being shot by the Nazis in Chateaubriand, the metallurgist Jean-Pierre Timbaud cried out," ""Long live the German Communist Party!"" "And that, you see..." "Why are you anti-Communist, Colonel?" "The main reason is that I'm a Catholic." "I know they helped the Resistance, and I'm also aware of the fact that" "they participated, for the most part, in their own interests," "in order to defend Russia," "Communist Russia, which is their motherland." "Russia is their motherland?" "Although they claim to be international," "Russia is, after all, the country that defends their ideals." "Our main disagreement was the following:" "Should we aim to be a reserve army, or an army that grows strong through battle?" "Both sides had different opinions." "How did you manage to reconcile these differences in the Resistance?" "I wasn't very good at it." "Indeed, as regional leader in Limoges," "I never once made contact with the Communists." " Although you were supposed to?" " Although I was ordered to." " And the order came from London?" " Yes." "The army ranks generally viewed us as dangerous people, who were prepared to shed blood for reasons they felt inadequate." "We were surprised by London's insistence that we join together in fighting for the Resistance." "We felt that it would be dangerous to arm these Communists." "After all, some of these Communists were not very commendable people." "We feared this would lead to problems after Liberation." "From what I've understood, you were in charge of the assault groups." "Did you participate in any assaults?" "I did some sabotage, but I never assaulted anyone." "What I mean is that I never deliberately shot down a German in the street." " But you would have?" " Yes, had it been my job, but that was not my responsibility." "You say the Communists were not very commendable people." "For example, some of the Communists they had recruited were condemned people, for example." "It was due to these conditions that we praised the action taken by Pierre George, Colonel Fabien, who killed a German in the metro." "People had to get used to fighting." "There were two ways of seeing things." "All over Paris, there were lists of those who had been killed." "Either you could give in to despair, and resign yourself to do nothing, or you could fight." "The army would give orders to attack, whereas the Communists were in favour of immediate guerrilla warfare, in the form of assassinations or sabotage." "They were disobeying the orders we'd been sent from London." "We thought to ourselves that orders of that nature shouldn't be obeyed, and we, of all people, used one of de Gaulle's sayings, which we twisted around, and said," ""National insurrection goes hand in hand with liberation."" "The Resistance was a permanent guerrilla war." "It was three guys who intercepted a German convoy on the road, threw three grenades, shot two rounds, and took off in the wilderness." "And this proved to be the only way of training and keeping fighters." "Do you have the impression that France today has been somewhat determined by the way it was during WWII, or at least from '39 to '44?" "I'm convinced of it." "The proof of this is that de Gaulle began his life, his political life, by a breach of trust." "This breach of trust was rather odd." "I think that if in 1940 we had had the same referendum we had a few days ago, on April 27, some 90% of the French population would have voted for Pétain and a quiet German occupation." "So he was at complete odds with history." "The Free French do not accept this defeat." "The Free French do not consent to the idea that, on the pretext of European unification, their country should be used by the enemy as a departure point for attacking other peoples, who are fighting for the same ideals." "Until the day we met the main player... until the clay I said, "I want to see de Gaulle,"" "it didn't go so well." "I found myself facing a man who astounded me, because he was already quite simply the King of France." " But his subjects didn't know him." " He was a king without subjects." "There are two things we still haven't fully understood today concerning the position of de Gaulle and the Free French." "In England at that time, there were several foreign governments, but they were all governments, whereas de Gaulle and the Free French were not." "All the other powers here in London had come with their governments:" "the Dutch, Belgians, Norwegians." "Their governments in London were the same as the ones at home." "But this wasn't the case in France, as Pétain was still in power." "Is that not the worst accusation of Pétain and the Vichy administration that one could possibly make?" "After all, France is the only country guilty of this." "Yes, that's true." "At the heart of the debate, it is true that de Gaulle, because his means were so limited, because his army was so small, and the territories behind him so secondary, that he really had no other choice" "than to be extremely rigid, to be a stickler for the rights he represented." " His pride became a weapon." " It's true that his pride, tenacity and rather inflexible nature did not make things any easier." "But I do think that politically thinking, he was right." "Understand that politically, he was right." "Pierre Mendés-France, flying officer in '39, was accused of desertion by the Vichy regime, and sentenced by the Clermont military tribunal." "The former prime minister managed to escape and arrived in London via Switzerland." "I must admit that what happened in France had traumatised me greatly." "I had a difficult time getting over the insult of having been accused of desertion in face of the enemy." "I felt a need to fight, to prove that I was a fighter." "When I arrived in London, my choice was clear." " Because of the accusation of desertion?" " Yes." "That night, I found myself facing de Gaulle for the first time." "He questioned me thoroughly on the state of France, as he was obviously on the lookout for information, and wanted to know what people were thinking, how the French felt towards the Resistance." "I must admit that meeting de Gaulle was for me an overwhelming thing." "It was a deeply moving event." "And I must say that our first meeting went very well." "Wasn't he cold?" "They say that when people came from France..." " That's true." " He was happy, but..." "No, it's true." "He was a shy man, and it was this shy nature of his that was at the root of his cold manner of welcoming certain people." "He wasn't cold to me, maybe because we had a long conversation." "What was the general spirit of the Free French Fighters?" "It was..." "There's no denying that it was a very unusual army." "It was very limited in number, because of the situation." "They all arrived feeling, and let's not mince words, rather humiliated, because the ruling French government, Vichy, had signed the armistice and abandoned England." "They didn't know how welcomed they would be in England." "But they were welcomed with open arms." "Every one of them felt a deep sense of gratitude for the simple fact that the English welcomed them." "And then there was a sense of admiration for the English people, who were the only ones to stand up to the storm." "What was unique about the French pilots was the ever-present debate on whether or not we had the right to bomb France." "The Lorraine squadron was a unit whose planes didn't have a very large field of action." "So there was, unfortunately, no way we could bomb Berlin." "But the targets we were given were often Belgium, Holland or France." "And that was really a cruel dilemma." "It was this preoccupation, this haunting worry, which led us to progressively specialise in a type of bombing which had the fewest hitches, to use the term they employed then." "It was a type of hedge-hopping." "We would bomb at very low altitudes, which was much riskier, but allowed us greater accuracy." "England victorious?" "Half of its regular navy has sunk, as has a third of its wartime navy." "England has lost Europe." "It is losing the very little influence it had on the Soviets, and it is losing its influence on India." "England has been defeated." "England's only way out is to call in the Bolsheviks." "But as a Frenchman, I'd be afraid they'd stab us in the back." "PRESIDENT LAVAL SPEAKS OUT" ""IF GERMANY DOESN'T WIN, BOLSHEVISM WILL"" "My father-in-law's philosophy, the one often shared with the family, was that the only realistic solution" "was for our country to gain time while Germany got increasingly involved in their war against the Russians," "a war which, in his opinion, would last for years, and in so doing, we would allow France to maintain its position in the world, as well as its empire." "On April 21, 1942, in an appeal to France, the head of government stated to his listeners:" "I have meditated on what I am now saying in my village, in the land of Auvergne, to which I remain very attached." "But the time spent in the privacy of his own family was limited, and as the clock struck eight, he had to return to work." "He spent a few more moments with the locals of the area who come every morning to chat with him." "I truly believe that the majority of Frenchmen today realise that Pierre Laval did all he could to defend them." "You've seen for yourself, as you visited the village today, and interviewed people who saw Pierre Laval at work, that not one single person is willing to accuse Laval of any outrageous crime." " You knew my father-in-law well?" " Yes." "We knew each other quite well during the period of 1936 to 1944." "The last time I saw him was on the eve of his permanent move to Paris." "I never saw him again." "But in Vichy, I used to see him every day." "We would discuss our problems, from mineral water to sawmills." " Did you ever discuss politics?" " Never." "No, we never discussed politics." "Why did the whole of France condemn him at that moment?" "The whole of France didn't condemn him." "Certainly not." "Sometimes I'd visit him in the castle, and appeal to him on behalf of my prisoners." "Would you come here?" " Hello, sir." " Hello." "These gentlemen are in Châteldon making a film on the Occupation." " How old were you when war began?" " Twenty-five years old." " What regiment were you in?" " The 28th Artillery Regiment." " And what happened?" " We were taken prisoner on June 20." "And then, after some hard times, as a favour from the President, Mr Laval, I had the privilege of being repatriated to Châteldon." "And I thank both him and the Countess." "In what year did you return?" "I returned on October 17, 1941." "It was certainly a big favour as some had to stay until '45 or longer." "So it was lucky to be taken prisoner if you were from Châteldon?" "We were the privileged few." "Today, Rene' Bousquet, from the Ministry of the Interior, picked up the head of the government in order to make full use of the 20 minutes from Châteldon to Vichy." "The secretary general made his report, and the man in charge knows the decisions he must soon take." "I say that if the Germans had only had their own Gestapo, they couldn't have caused half the harm they did." "Yes, they killed people in the street, but it was the French police who helped." "If the French police had not helped seek out the Communists, not to mention all the other patriots, the Germans would have made a stab in the dark, but they could never have hit as hard as they hit the French Resistance." "Is that you?" "Bring me the latest police reports." "It's now time for the daily meeting of the Head of State and the Head of Government." "Every one of France's problems is thoroughly and openly examined by the two men." "Marshal Pétain didn't have a thing in common with the President." "Pétain was a stickler for order." "Laval liked to improvise." "They were complete opposites of one another." "They had nothing in common." "What inspired him to take Laval a first time and then a second?" "The first time, he didn't have much choice, as it was basically Laval who made Pétain head of state." "The second time, he was in what you could call a rather tragic situation, where the occupiers basically forced him to choose Laval." "Marshal Pétain was surrounded by a legion" "of right-wing and far right-wing influences, whereas my father-in-law, I say again, was a man who could be considered a centrist today." "Laval's policies were pro-German because he believed in them." "Let me just quickly tell you something Laval told me." "You, of course, remember that horrible radio programme during which he declared, "I hope Germany wins."" "I was in Paris." "The next day, I met with my family in Auvergne." "I first stopped in Vichy because I couldn't understand how a French leader could say such a thing." "I saw Laval the next morning." ""Sir, I am appalled by what you said yesterday."" ""What did I say?" "That you wanted Germany to win."" "He added, "And after?" "What did I add afterwards?"" ""I was so aghast that I can't remember."" "He said, "Win the war against Bolshevism."" "I recently read an old issue of Le Moniteur du Puy-de-Dôme, on which most of the front page was dedicated to the words of Laval:" ""I hope Germany wins."" "There were several interpretations of this statement, and some people have said that we must remember that he added," ""I hope they win as I'm involved in the fight against Communism."" "Yet not everyone in France was Communist, each one of us has their own ideas, which is why we fought." "We can't be anti-Communist, because we're not anti-anything." "It's the same thing as saying, "And those freemasons," ""they must be sent to the camps."" "Or, "So you're a Jew?" "All the Jews must be burned in the gas chambers."" "During the relatively long time you spent in Clermont-Ferrand, did you ever see or hear of the persecutions that occurred?" "No, I didn't see or hear anything about them." "Are you denying that the Jews, the Juden, were persecuted?" "Do you mean the Jungen, the young, or the Juden, the Jews?" "The Juden." "I had no idea how many Jews had infiltrated partisan ranks." "In any case, it wasn't the army's job to take care of the Jews." "An extremely disturbing census was taken of the Jews who were either deported or arrested in the various countries occupied by Germany, and, with the exception of France," "the statistics are terrifying." "Of all these Jews, in 1946, only 5.8% survived." "Whereas, if you look at the statistics, which nobody is denying, concerning French Jews," "only 5% did not survive." "Just take, for example, the army." "Sir, excuse me for interrupting you, but the statistic you quote, and which I know well" "refers only to French Jews who had not lost their citizenship." "However, there is another statistic which is fatefully similar to yours," "which says that of the Jews without French citizenship, the foreign Jews, or Jews stripped of citizenship, only 5% survived, the same average as in other countries." "So I am asking you if a statesman has the right, even if he is a Frenchman and a great patriot, to make such decisions concerning other human beings?" "It was a tragic and dramatic situation, in which one had to make the choice which would save the most human lives possible." "I was brought up in a lower middle-class family." "I went to Pasteur High School, but for me, being Jewish wasn't an issue, as we weren't religious." "And when I found out through others that I was Jewish, at first, I felt extremely sad to be rejected by my community and this country I loved, not because I was born here, but because I loved the history." "Then I took an interest in Jews." "I think that discussing statistics in such a situation is impossible." "The fact that the French government agreed to turn in French nationals, and even people to whom France had traditionally granted asylum, proves that the government wasn't worthy of its country, and of all that we loved and respected about France." "France is the only country in all Europe whose government collaborated." "Others signed an armistice or surrendered, but France was the only country to have collaborated and voted laws which were even more racist than the Nuremberg Laws, as the French racist criteria were even more demanding than the German racist criteria." "It's not something to be proud of." "I understand that history books only present the positive side, but historically speaking, that's wrong." "I was arrested for belonging to the Resistance." "I was arrested during an armed campaign." " When you were 16 years old?" " I was 16, going on 17." "I was arrested by the French police, and though I wasn't tortured, I was interrogated for 18 clays in a rather physical manner." "I spent one year in a French prison." "In prison, I saw seven of my fellow group members gunned down, by squads of French policemen." "And I was given over to the SS, with the other prison inmates, on July 2, 1944, by the French Department of Prisons, the only one in Europe that stooped so low as to give the Germans every inmate, bound hand and foot." "I was deported on the "train of death", thus named because it sat for two months being shot at by the English who didn't know who was in it." "I escaped on August 25, 1944." "The train arrived in Dachau on the 27th." "That's when I found out that my parents were there." "I hadn't seen my parents in four years, and I was told they'd been deported." "France was full of concentration camps:" "Lurs, Argeles, Rivesaltes, Fortbarreau, Drancy, and many others." "Along with the Jews, there were Spanish Republicans," "Freemasons and gypsies." "And all these people were delivered to the Germans upon their request." "Many people participated in these persecutions, not to mention those who participated indirectly, for their own personal reasons, to be rid of their competitors, etc." "Out of 130 letters of denunciation filed by the Office for Jewish Affairs, at least half were written by doctors who were informing the Gestapo or the Office for Jewish Affairs against so-and-so, who was in direct competition with them." "One fine summer day, the Paris police, under the supervision of the SS and the Gestapo in occupied lands, organised a clay of Jewish arrests in the capital." "This day was henceforth known as the Rafle du Vél d'Hiv." "At that time, the Germans had only planned on arresting people over 16 years of age." "They weren't going to arrest children." "Yet the Paris police, which organised July 16 with such enthusiasm that they earned the praise of the Germans, began arresting children." "So there were these 4,051 children sitting in the Velodrome d'Hiver, crying and wetting their pants." "They caused the social workers, mostly Quakers or Protestant women, very serious problems." "As the Germans hadn't planned on deporting these children, they first deported the parents to camps in France, hence separating the children from their parents, while waiting for a decision." "Eventually, Eichmann..." "No, it was Rothke, Eichmann's representative, who sent a telegram to Berlin to ask what should be done with these children." "While they were waiting," "Laval is reported to have said," ""The children must be deported, too."" "This appears in a telegram from Danneker, who was based in France." "This telegram can be consulted in the CDJC archives." "In my opinion, there are two things that prove it's authentic:" "firstly, Pastor Beugner's attempt to convince Laval to protect the children." "According to Beugner, when he suggested evacuating the children, possibly to America," "Laval replied, "It doesn't matter." "I'm preventing the disease."" "I'm sorry for interrupting when it's not my turn, sir." "But if these children had seen what I saw, if they'd seen these poor people, men, women, children, young and old, people of every age, piled up in these trucks, shoved in like human cattle, one on top of the other." "And I knew where they were going." "I knew." "There was only one thing to do." "Had they seen this, they'd have done what I did." "They'd have taken their handkerchiefs, said to their employees," ""Excuse me." "I'll be back in a minute."" "And they'd have gone and cried." "Does anti-Semitism still exist in Auvergne?" " Yes." "Still alive and well." " What makes you say that?" "For example, it's common to refer to someone as a "Yid" or a "Jew"." " In student circles in Clermont?" " Yes." "Do you think the reason behind this may be the fact that the Occupation isn't discussed enough?" "In a big family like mine, I have seven and a half children, since the advent of modern times, a father only has one main concern:" "earning money." "There's no family conversation, no family life, because it takes time and we need money." "How many of these children survived?" " What was the percentage?" " None of the children made it." "I wasn't the first to lead an inquiry on the subject of what happened to the children in the camps." "And I discovered that they were immediately gassed to death." "My father-in-law was against repression." "Everyone knows that." "Even after his last meeting, Pierre Laval's day isn't over." "As the Hôtel Matignon falls silent, the president knows that tomorrow is a new clay to start again and has clearly defined his objectives:" "In my opinion, this work is necessary, and I will not quit until France's salvation is assured." "So I ask you to understand and try to support my work." "A visit to Sigmaringen Castle accompanied by a former volunteer in the Waffen SS Charlemagne Division." "May 1969" "Till 1944, the royal family lived in this castle." "Under orders from Hitler's regime, the royal family was given 24 hours to leave the castle." "The new Vichy administration was given these quarters." "This is where Marshal Pétain and Prime Minister Pierre Laval remained until the surrender of Germany." "I came with two friends." "We'd just returned from Yanovitz, near Prague, where we'd been taking advanced anti-tank lessons, and we had a very precise question we wanted to ask Marshal Pétain, as we knew he was here, about whether or not the final point we had reached" "was logical, and if we should make the jump and leave for the Eastern front." "What was this final point?" "The final point was wearing a German uniform, something neither our education nor, at a certain point," "the taste for something new we'd experienced in our youth, had prepared us for." "We arrived here at the castle and asked to see Marshal Pétain." "There were guards around, French policemen." "Our request was quickly turned down." "Marshal Pétain refused to see us." " How about Laval?" " He wouldn't see us either." "How did you feel about that?" "It must have been a serious rejection as you thought that there would be some complicity between the people who preached the policies and you who put them into practice." "It was a complete and devastating rejection." "It made us want to leave there as quickly as possible, and join our friends in Wilflecken, head for the Eastern Front, and get it over with." "We no longer had any illusions." "It is hard for me to speak on behalf of 7,000 young men, for there were 7,000 young men from different walks of life who fought on the Eastern front in the Charlemagne Division." "They say that only 300 survived." "I believe it." "It's very important." "As I told you, the majority of them weren't prepared in the least to wear that uniform, and specially not the most extreme uniform." " The Waffen SS uniform?" " Yes, that's right." "So the Frenchmen at Vichy, upon seeing you in these uniforms, treated you like you were..." "Like we were an embarrassment, an embarrassment which would require explanation in the future." "But as you know, in the years that followed, the Vichy people tried to explain that it was simply part of a policy, and that it wasn't really serious." "That astounds me." "You know, when 7,000 young men, many of whom might have become the leaders of our nation, are massacred in another country's uniform." "For me, that's serious." "Here you see a portrait of Princess Stephanie, the Queen of Portugal." "She was the wife of the Portuguese King Don Pedro V, and died at a very young age." "In order to understand many people's involvement in the war, you have to think back to 1934 at the earliest." "There was not a single senior school in France which was not in a state of agitation." "From 1934 onwards, there were extremely violent political fights in high schools." "There were editorials in Gringoire, Candide, Action Française, in Populaire, and Humanité." "People were constantly encouraged to fight one another." "Furthermore, soldiers felt they were the guardians of the right wing." "In February 1934, which was an important date in the history of pre-war political fighting in France," " how old were you?" " I was almost 13 years old." "Politics already concerned you?" "They spoke of revolution." "For people like us, there really wasn't any choice." "We wouldn't choose the Communists, so we had to choose the other revolutionary party, which was Fascism." "There is a lot of discussion on anti-Semitism." "Don't forget that my entire youth took place in an atmosphere which was ripe in violent anti-Semitism." "And we were also touched by the fact that in February 1934, people were killed." "It was the beginning of a revolution." "France was divided into two." "Did the fear of Communism play a major role in your political awakening?" "There was one event which happened abroad, but was of extreme importance." "While one generation grew up with the Algerian war and was interested in it, we were most interested in the war in Spain." "How could a boy of my age, raised in the environment in which I was raised, be anything other than a devoted anti-Communist, when all the papers that I read at the time were filled with photos of nuns who had been gunned down," "of Carmelites who'd been unearthed, of desecrated tombstones and so forth?" "This was..." " This was your background." " Yes, exactly." "Exactly." "As far as Fascism was concerned, how did it strike you, intellectually speaking?" "Did you know what it was all about?" "I must admit that I had a vague idea." "For us, it was a way of rebelling against our families." "The first images we saw of Nuremberg were like a new religion." "We were astounded." "I can honestly say that it was like a mass to us." "There is a religious element to every political ideology." "And if you aren't impressed by the decorum, especially the youth..." "The chairs, covered in leather, carry the Hohenzollern emblem, with the motto of the Hohenzollern:" ""Nihil sine Deo", in English, "Nothing without God"." "This room was used by the royal family as a dining room till 1944." "We are now reaching the corridor." "Here you can see several magnificent miniatures, representing the members of the royal family." "At one point, I was contacted by some real Resistance fighters." "At that time, they were looking for people who wanted to fight." "It's true, I have no excuse." "I had several opportunities to join the active Resistance." "My idea at the time, the idea of my youth, was that only two ideologies existed which could change the world." "One which had already changed the world, Marxism, and the other, which was National Socialism." "Does it bother you if we say that, roughly speaking, in 1941 you were a young Fascist?" "No, it's true." "You were on the side which ran no risk of persecution." "Were you particularly proud of being on that side, seeing how France was at the time?" "It's good that you bring up the problem of persecution." "It was unavoidable, and it is something I consider very important." "I won't pretend that I didn't know." "I knew." "I knew they were arresting Jews." "That's true." "But I can assure you that I never imagined that it ended in..." " In Auschwitz?" " Never." "You thought it simply meant they were outcast from society?" "I knew that they were sent to camps." "But at that time, there were many prisoners." "There were two million French prisoners of war in Germany." "Between a political prisoner and a prisoner of war, for me, I didn't think there was any difference." "Let's come out and say it." "If France wants to remain a major European and world player, if France wants to remain worthy of Europe, we must join the fight against Bolshevism." "It's our only solution." "Both occupied and non-occupied zones plan to fight Bolshevism." "Defeating Bolshevism will unite Europe." "There were recruitment offices across France." "We must not try to deny that decrees were signed." "I know that today people are disgusted by us." "The policy of the Vichy people, who incidentally have all joined majority groups since the Liberation," "is to explain the situation by saying that extreme Gaullism and extreme Communism were dangerous, and so were we, we, the fans of collaboration, the bloodthirsty." "When did you realise the reality of the German military?" "For me, the reality lay in the officer schools of the Waffen SS." "It was brand new, very unique, there was a mythology to it." "It made us smile, and at the same time we admired them." "With our Latin background, we discovered German mythology, oaths taken between chains," "definitions like "My honour is called fidelity,"" "and other things which fascinated us." "Once a Frenchman, always a Frenchman, even when faced with such convictions." "When the Germans realised this, they wouldn't take us seriously." "Did you get along with the Germans?" "What did you call them?" "Les Chleus [Krauts]." "I don't know one single Frenchman from the Charlemagne Division who didn't..." "Relations were hostile?" "Yes." "Most of us called Hitler "Le Grand Jules"." "That was typical of the French." "They called him "Big Jules"." "Was the foreign Waffen SS a European army?" "We played a part, if you allow me to use the word, in the defeat." "And that makes you realise that a European army only really existed in people's imaginations." "All I know about the defeat is that the Germans had reserved us a choice spot when the Eastern front crumbled, when Rokossovsky and Zhukov carved up the German front into several different pieces." "When this all occurred, the Germans rushed, I do mean rushed, the foreign Waffen SS troops into these areas." "I strongly suspect that they were already trying to get rid of something that made them look bad, that might hinder future negotiations." "Did you have any contact with the German people?" "Yes, of course, and that is one of my strongest memories of the time." "As we were going to face the Russians, we met the exodus of refugees." "It was worse than in 1940." "All of Eastern Prussia and part of Pomerania were trying to take refuge in central Germany." "What would they say to you?" "What would they say to us?" "They offered us their daughters." "They preferred to give them to us than see them raped by the Russians." "We saw the Germans withdrawing, and we were there to protect their withdrawal." "It was something new in history, and it was quite funny." "It was one of the things that made us laugh, although the threat of the Russians made it somewhat less funny." "They were still giving out medals." "Were you awarded anything?" "YES." "What?" "An Iron Cross?" "Yes, first and second class." "Bearing in mind what you learned in the last war, the results of National Socialism, which, as you explained, had a certain appeal or charm about it at one point in your life, bearing this in mind," "would you change the choices made at that time?" "Yes, of course." "I think only an idiot would refuse to change their opinion." "But I can only speak for myself." "I have changed, but that's me." "Young people have asked me what I think about their commitment." "It's always interesting, fascinating, because commitment always brings on change, but sometimes this change has dramatic consequences." "So I advise people to be cautious." "Are you a liberal?" "Are you afraid of ideologies?" "A bit." "Actually, very much." "Personally, I was not physically affected by the Occupation." "They didn't kill my wife or my children." "My friend Menut obviously feels very differently." "Not only did they take Menut's wife, they also tortured her, and tore off her nipples." "They even burned her with a branding iron." "So Menut's state of mind is completely different." "Her back was raw with whip marks." " How did you find out?" " I was told by Mrs Michelin who was in the same cell as my wife." "I believe her name was Mrs Jean Michelin." "There was also Mrs Martineau from Volvic." "One of them helped me identify the body, saying," ""I'm sure those are her slippers," ""I made them for her before they shot her to death."" " You didn't recognise her at first?" " No." "They had buried her without..." "Without a coffin." "She was still alive when they buried her." "She was in a coma from being whipped when they took her, and nobody had the decency to finish her off." "They kicked her and punched her." "It was one of the executioners himself who told me that he shoved a broomstick up her vagina." "Some people blamed us, others didn't." "It depended on whether or not their father or son had died during the war, or been taken prisoner in Germany." "Those people were obviously angry at us." "They thought we mistreated the prisoners in Germany." "But that wasn't true." "But that's what they said." "I was taken prisoner by the Maquis and in October 1944," "I was taken to Clermont-Ferrand to be interned in a camp near the station." "I got off the train at 10am." "And as I was injured, I'd been tied to my stretcher." "I stayed like that all day on the platform." "This is the station." "This is the main building." "This is the platform, and the camp was across from it." "That evening, some nurses fetched me with a wheelbarrow." "During the day, many civilians came and stared at me lying there." "Some of them spat at me." "Then there were others who seemed to take pity on my state." "What were you thinking?" "How did you feel lying there on the platform in Clermont station?" "I felt it wasn't very decent of the people there." "It was disgusting, actually." "They should have realised that we could have clone the same to their father or son." "Then what?" "So you were tied up?" "Yes, and I was unable to move." "It was a shame, as I knew Clermont like the back of my hand, and I could have hidden." "I had a girlfriend in Saint-Césaire." "And that's where you would have hidden?" "Probably." "In any case, she was a very nice girl, who wasn't against the Germans and was pretty to boot." "The beauty who slept with the King of Prussia," "With the King of Prussia," "Had her hair shaved clean off," "Her hair shaved clean off." "Her weakness for "Ich liebe dich"," "For "Ich liebe dich"," "Has cost her the price of a wig," "The price of a wig." "The sans-culottes and the Phrygian caps," "The Phrygian caps," "Handed their hair over to a dog barber," "To a dog barber." "I ought to have tried to save her mane," "To save her mane." "I should have spoken out for her ponytail," "For her ponytail." "It was in August 1944." "I had taken holidays in August and was visiting my mother, when a car full of civilians pulled up." "They'd come to get me." "There were flags everywhere and they all carried machine guns." "I hadn't realised what was up, as Châteaugué is a quiet village, but when I arrived in Clermont, I saw that everyone was abuzz." "People were being arrested left, right, and centre." "I was locked up in a cell underneath the Poterne, a public square in Clermont-Ferrand." "There were women wearing their nightgowns, or their pyjamas, as they'd been taken in the night." "I didn't know why they'd taken me." "I had really no idea." "We had to stand trial." "Some women came back from such trials with their heads shaved." "Those were the girls who dated the Germans." "But, for me, it was..." " You didn't date the Germans?" " Never." "What were you accused of?" "I spent an entire month in the Clermont-Ferrand prison, before being told why I was there." "On several occasions, I asked different officers if they knew why I had been placed in prison." "When I told them my name, none understood why I was there." "They told me it might be a mistake, that I should be patient." ""No doubt, they'll let you go."" "Now many of them belonged to the French Resistance army." "Eventually, I found out I'd been jailed for denouncing a captain, a friend of mine." "Actually, it was his wife who was my friend." "They were also locals, about my age." "The Chamalière Gestapo had intercepted a denunciation letter, and that denunciation was the reason I had been arrested." "So you weren't actually guilty?" "No, I wasn't." "Naturally, I denied it." "They came to get me at the prison, they took me to a building on Lille Square, and a certain individual removed all my clothes, and put me in a bath that was filled with water." "I tried to hold on, but I was handcuffed from behind." "I turned my head around, but he punched me on the chin," "So I sank to the bottom of the bath." "As I was underwater, I was forced to drink." "They realised that I was starting to lose strength, so he grabbed me by the hair, pulled me out of the water, stuck two fingers down my throat, made me throw up," "and asked me if I confessed." "But I wasn't guilty." "And I regretted I hadn't done anything." "It was so horrible." "But who were these people?" "You talk about "they" and "he"." "Do you think they were policemen who had worked for another regime?" "I don't know." " Don't you live in Clermont?" " I never saw these people again." "I think they were people who got involved in the whole thing with the sole purpose of killing other people." "During the Occupation, were you for or against Marshal Pétain?" "I supported him." "Why?" "I wasn't a politician or anything, I was just in favour of Pétain." "So how did this happen to you?" "A friend was denounced to the Gestapo." "The letter was intercepted by the Chamalière Police." "Do you know who might have imitated your writing?" "It was his wife." " His wife did?" " Yes." " She was the one who denounced you?" " Yes." " Excuse me." " Go ahead." "Now we'll have some privacy." "Do you remember where we stopped?" "I do." "So then I asked the captain..." "I asked him..." "I don't know." "I had to stand trial." "Captain Mury was the first witness." "The judge even said to him," ""I hear your wife enjoys copying her friends' writing."" "He replied, "Sometimes, but that means nothing." ""And furthermore," ""the accused woman is using this to try to make my wife look guilty."" "And when Mrs Mury took the stand, he asked her the same question." "She replied, "Never"." "The judge said, "But it's been confirmed."" "She turned to me, thinking I was the one who'd confirmed it, and said, "What a memory she has!"" "The judge slammed his fist down and said, "It wasn't her." ""It was your husband who said it." And then she began to falter, saying she only copied very pretty handwriting." "A murmur passed through the entire court." "There were people there on both sides, both for and against me, but they all felt sure the judge would ask for further inquiry into how well she could imitate handwriting." "But he didn't." "And I was sentenced to 15 years." "When you say you had both friends and enemies in the courtroom, were these friends and enemies characterised by a certain attitude under the Occupation or not?" "No, no..." "Were your enemies people who claimed to be Resistance fighters?" "Exactly." "They weren't personal enemies or anything." "I supported Marshal Pétain, and they didn't." "Or so I think." "When you were brought to the room with the bath, did you ever think that before, at the time when you generally agreed with the regime, the same thing happened to the others?" "I don't know." "I have no idea." " You say that you were for Pétain." " Yes." "Was this because you were influenced by Catholic beliefs?" " No." " Why was it then?" " Maybe it was..." " Please try to remember." " Maybe it was because of his ideas." " Which ideas?" "His ideas on the future of France." "I thought he was a great man." " Do you still think so?" " Yes." "YES." "You defended many people accused by those in power at the time, and at the Liberation, you defended those accused by the new order." "It might seem odd to the uninformed." "As lawyers, our job is to defend the accused, but when politics change, the accused change too, depending on which side of the fence you're on." "It was a brutal period." "In the three or four clays after the liberation of Clermont, out of the 1,200 people arrested, only 600 were put in prison." "You can imagine what happened to the other 600." "And those who had trials then received a very summary justice, which might as well have been dispensed with, considering the atrocious things being punished." "I attended the trial of three militiamen who admitted to having arrested three Resistance fighters, ripped out their eyes, put bugs in the holes and sewn up their pupils." "In these cases, you wonder if a trial is necessary." "It may have been better to shoot them immediately." "Many were shot." "But then, later, many legal errors were also made, in that, in a wave of Liberation euphoria, many innocent people were executed." "However, after a month and a half or so, they set up official courts, with a professional judge presiding, accompanied by a jury, like the Crown Court." "And I don't think any further legal errors were made, if you accept the death penalty for someone who denounced a Frenchman who was taken away and never returned." "Mr d'Astier, National Liberation Movement." "May the traitors' heads roll, because that is justice." "May the property of collaborators, banks and corporations who betrayed us be seized, because that is justice." "Mr Guyot, Communist Party." "In order for France to be liberated, every inch of our motherland must be cleansed of every Boche and every traitor." "Anthony Eden, in this interview, generally speaking, your attitude towards Marshal Pétain has been rather charitable." "Do you think the sentence he was given at the Liberation was unfair?" "It is not my place to judge whether or not people's anger was justified." "We haven't been through it, so we cannot say." "Personally, I was not shocked when General de Gaulle said," ""We must pay tribute to the Marshal of Verdun."" "After all, it's a part of France's history, whether we like it or not." "Sectarianism can't go on forever." "It's not because a man is killed that the problem will be solved." "They must not be allowed to run free or to be involved in politics, but we must not turn them into possible future heroes." "That's my opinion, but not many Resistants would agree with it." "How did you arrive at this stage in which you reject sectarianism?" "How do you explain the change of heart?" "I know it seems like a sudden change, but it was because I was scared." "I was scared the whole time." "After the self-sacrificing heroes, like General Massu, or the man who..." "I could never have committed suicide." "I love life." "Born February 6, 1900 Died June 12, 1969" "French Resistance Fighter Military Cross 1939-45" "Were you denounced?" "Yes, someone denounced me." "I think I know who it was, but..." "If he hadn't been denounced, no one would've found him." "You make me laugh with your questions!" "The Krauts didn't denounce - bad French people did." "Were you ever tempted to seek revenge?" "What good would it do?" "It is natural that it would be tempting." "When I first came back, I may have been tempted." "But then I felt it wasn't worth it." "I remember one clay at Clermont Police HQ, a guy said to me, "Do you want to get revenge?" "I know who it was." ""If you want revenge, the boys and I will get him for you," ""but we'll never tell you his name."" "I said, "I already know who did it."" "I told him the name." "He asked, "Who told you?"" ""Nobody," I replied." ""I just worked it out." ""So don't bother taking revenge."" "What is it like nowadays, for someone like you, to have neighbours in the village or surrounding areas, who were informers?" "How can you live with that?" "Do you forget it?" "It's something you can't forget." " So what can you do?" " Nothing." "This is the Iron Cross." "This is the Cross of Merit, with a sword." "This is another one, the Cross of Merit second class." "It was for hand-to-hand combat." "This was for serving in the East." "We call it "the frozen meat medal", and this medal was for being loyal during four years of war." "I see, a medal for loyalty." "Yes, four years of war." "I'm sure that you're aware that as far as World War II medals are concerned, there are many people in Germany who refuse to wear them, because they were awarded by the Nazi state." "Yet you don't hesitate to wear them with formal dress." "Yes, some people feel uncomfortable." "But if you look at these people, you see they're generally men who never fought, men who weren't soldiers, who didn't deserve any medals." "You think that they don't wear them simply because they have none?" "That's right." "Nowadays, they're dishing out medals." "What's the difference between a medal then and a medal now?" ""The worm was in the fruit", as we say here in Bavaria." "We're not more stupid than anyone else, and yet we lost the war." "Nowadays we have to wonder if we're not better off like this." "After all, if we had won, Hitler may have continued, and where would that leave us today?" "Perhaps we'd be occupying some country in Africa or America." "As I said, was on a motorcycle mission." "In my pocket, I had a Beretta pistol my friend Bessoux had given me." "I don't think it was a gift, he just wanted to get rid of it." "He was afraid." "So there I am with a gun in my pocket, when, where the road bends toward Ravin Blanc, all of a sudden, what do I see?" "The Germans had passed me, and there is this old Boche, a doddering pale old man, shaking like a leaf, in need of a haircut, in a tattered uniform, whose motorcycle had broken down." "So he tells me to pull over by making signs like these." "There he is, only seven feet away, and there I am, a gun in my pocket." "I wanted to shoot one myself before it ended." "So I look at him closely." "What do I see?" "There he is, dolman buttoned up to the neck, looking so fat that he might actually explode." "I felt that killing a pig wasn't very challenging." "So I let the whole thing drop." "He started chatting, but I don't understand a word of German." "I said goodbye and took off." "I don't know what became of him." "That's what I wanted to tell you." "Had you killed him, would you feel remorse?" "I would feel remorse, and you must not forget that, even if I didn't kill him, I did think about killing him."