Hitler’s French Literary Afterlives, 1945-2017

137 Pages·2019·2.002 MB·English

by  Manuel Bragança

Hitler’s French Literary
Afterlives, 1945-2017
Hitler’s French Literary Afterlives, 1945-2017
Manuel Bragança
Hitler’s French
Literary Afterlives,
1945-2017
Manuel Bragança
University College Dublin
Belfield, Dublin, Ireland
ISBN 978-3-030-21616-0 ISBN 978-3-030-21617-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21617-7
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Cover credit: Pattern © Melisa Hasan
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This book is dedicated to my parents, Joaquim and Maria, and to my niece,
Laura (2003–2019), who is sadly missed.
P
reface
For decades, Hitler has been demonised and dehumanised. Yet, however
unsettling this may still be for some, he was only human. As Professor
Richard Evans, a leading expert in the history of Nazism, put it recently:
‘Viewing Hitler as a human being, which he undoubtedly was, is more
challenging to our understanding, surely, than simply writing him off as a
cartoon villain’ (The Guardian, 30 April 2015).
In France, surprisingly perhaps, Hitler has never been depicted as a
‘cartoon villain’ or at least not in any novel or fictional text that had any
sort of public or critical success. In fact, Hitler only features in relatively
few fictional French texts. This is for complex literary, cultural, ethical
and historical reasons. And this is what this book will be about.
Dublin, Ireland Manuel Bragança
vii
a
cknowledgements
This book is the result of several years of research and procrastination.
Like most, if not all, academic publications, it was informed by com-
ments made by many colleagues at various times and in various places.
In particular, I would like to thank: colleagues in the Institute of
Historical Research (School of Advanced Study, University of London)
and more specifically Helena Hammond for her kind invitation to con-
tribute to the ‘philosophy of history’ research seminars; Helena Duffy
for inviting me to speak at a workshop dedicated to French perspectives
on the Holocaust in Royal Holloway, University of London; Frédéric
Royall, colleagues and students who attended a theoretical seminar
I gave at the University of Limerick on historical characters in fiction;
Johannes Koll, for taking the time to go back to his files to answer my
queries about Arthur Seyss-Inquart; and colleagues and students at
University College Dublin for the discussion that followed one of our
research seminars.
I would also like to thank the College of Arts and Humanities at
University College Dublin for awarding me a teaching buyout grant
which allowed to finish this book in good conditions.
The outline of this book and some sections were also discussed with
a number of other colleagues, including Margaret Atack and Dominique
Jeannerod, whom I would like to thank here.
Last but not least, Peter Tame deserves my special thanks for taking
the time to read and comment on the entire draft of the book.
ix
c
ontents
1 Hitler and the Second World War in French
Historiography and Fiction 1
2 Hitler, in the Margins: On Jean-Paul Sartre’s Le Sursis
(1945) and Jean Genet’s Pompes funèbres (1947) 17
3 What if Hitler Had Survived? On Pierre Boulle’s ‘Son
Dernier Combat’ (1965) and René Fallet’s Ersatz (1974) 39
4 From Adolf to Hitler: On Frédéric Dard’s Le Dragon
de Cracovie (1998) and Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s
La Part de l’autre (2001) 57
5 Adolf Before Hitler: On Christian Millau’s Le Passant
de Vienne (2010) and Michel Folco’s La Jeunesse mélan-
colique et très désabusée d’Adolf Hitler (2010) 81
6 Hitler, from France to the Rest of the World (and Back):
Concluding Remarks 101
Index 125
xi
l t
ist of ables
Table 1.1 Memories of Vichy in France, according to Henry Rousso in
Le Syndrome de Vichy (1990) 6
Table 1.2 Memories of the Second World War in French fiction, accord-
ing to Manuel Bragança in ‘Vichy, un passé qui ne passe pas?’
French Cultural Studies (2014) 7
Table 1.3 Primary corpus 14
xiii
CHAPTER1
Hitler and the Second World War in French
Historiography and Fiction
Abstract The introductory chapter argues that fiction is a privileged
mediumtounderstandthecollectiveconsciousnessofatime.Italsogives
an overview of how and why memories of the Second World War have
evolvedinFrancesince1945,highlightingtherolethattheartsandlitera-
tureplayedinthisregard.Thechapterconcludeswithatheoreticaldiscus-
sionoftheliteraryandethicaldifficultiesofincludinghistoricalcharacters
infiction,bothingeneraltermsandmorespecificallyinthecaseofAdolf
HitlerinFrenchfiction.
Keywords AdolfHitler·RolandBarthes·HenryRousso·Memory·
Evil·Literatureandhistory
IpersonallyfindHitleradetestablefigureanddespiseallthathisregimestood
for.Butthatcondemnationscarcelyhelpsmetounderstand.
IanKershaw,Hitler,1936–1945 (2000)
This short book is not about Hitler as an historical persona but about
his literary doubles in French fiction published from 1945 to the
present.Still,theexistenceofany‘double’beingintrinsicallylinkedtothe
existenceofan‘original’or‘real’character(Rosset1976),andtheSecond
World War remaining a highly ideological and sensitive field of research
©TheAuthor(s)2019 1
M.Bragança,Hitler’sFrenchLiteraryAfterlives,1945-2017,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21617-7_1