France 1940 ��� an enduring fascination

Maurice Gar��on (Photo Henri Martinie. Roger Viollet)

By ADRIAN TAHOURDIN

Vichy: Un pass�� qui ne passe pas was the eloquent title of a book by Eric Conan and Henri Rousso published in 1994. There���s no doubt that France in the years 1940 to 1945 exercises a particular fascination over historians, novelists and filmmakers. Added to which, we are given constant reminders of the period: on May 27, four members of the Resistance were reinterred in the Panth��on in Paris.(In an earlier post I jumped the gun by suggesting that the quartet had already been transferred there, but in fact the ceremony, at which President Hollande gave an oration, took place only on May 27.)

There are seventy-five occupants of the Panth��on. Jean Moulin was reinterred there in 1964, the first member of the Resistance to occupy its marble halls (see the TLS of December 12, 2014 for Julian Jackson and Matthew Cobb's article about Andr�� Malraux's tribute to the Resistance hero). Moulin has now been joined by Pierre Brossolette, Genevi��ve de Gaulle Anthonioz, Germaine Tillion and Jean Zay. In the President���s view, the ceremony represented ���one of the most important days, if not the most important day, of [his] presidential term���.

In June, Fayard published the 700-page wartime diary of the lawyer and writer Maurice Gar��on (1889���1967). Gar��on kept a diary for most of his life but the wartime section had been kept in a cupboard by his family until recently. It���s said to be revealing and fascinating. Gar��on, who once defended the novelist and recidivist Jean Genet on a charge of theft (of a volume of Verlaine���s poetry), was well acquainted with the Parisian literary world. In the words of Fran��ois Angelier, Le Monde���s reviewer of Journal (1939���1945), the volume offers an extraordinary portrait of ���le Tout-Paris collabo���. The diary will be reviewed in a future issue of the TLS.

Last year Caroline Moorehead published a gripping account of Resistance in the Massif Central, Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France. In next week���s TLS, meanwhile, there will be a short review by Moorehead of L��on Werth���s 33 Days, with an introduction by Werth���s close friend Antoine de Saint-Exup��ry. Werth (1878���1955) took part in the mass exodus from Paris in early June as the Wehrmacht advanced across northern France. 33 Days is a vivid account of those dramatic weeks. And let us not forget the not entirely successful film version earlier this year of Ir��ne N��mirovsky���s great, posthumously published novel Suite fran��aise.

The Princeton historian Philip Nord recently brought out a slim volume entitled France 1940: Defending the Republic (Yale). In September Faber and Faber will be publishing the 550-page Fighters in the Shadows: A new history of the French Resistance by the Oxford-based historian and TLS contributor Robert Gildea  (author of Marianne in Chains: In search of the German occupation, 2002). And just arrived in the TLS offices is a proof copy of David Drake���s equally bulky Paris at War: 1939���1944 (Harvard, November). All of these books will of course be reviewed. The fascination endures.