Parades And Politics At Vichy: French Officer Corps Under Marshal Petain

490 Pages·1966·25.201 MB·English

by  Robert O. Paxton

-£s-,
P A R A D ES A ND P O L I T I CS AT
V I C HY
THE FRENCH OFFICER CORPS
UNDER MARSHAL PETAIN
BY ROBERT O. PAXTON
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
I966
Copyright © 1966 by Princeton University Press
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
L.C. Card 66-10557
Printed in the United States of America by
Princeton University Press,
Princeton, New Jersey
TO MY PARENTS

Contents
Preface vii
I. June 1940: The French Army Lives On 3
II. L'Armie Nouvelle 39
III. July-December 1940: Neutrality
or Revanche} 63
IV. A Plague on Both Their Houses 94
V. Liberation in Captivity 141
VI. The Officers Turned Schoolmaster 183
VII. 1941: Neutrality Entrenched 214
VIII. The Uses and Abuses of Freedom:
Officers in Politics, 1941-42 253
IX. The Party of Revanche: Resistance in
the Armistice Army 282
X. 1942: Neutrality Threatened 311
XI. November 1942: Neutrality Defended 344
XII. After November 1942: The Officers
Dispersed 391
XIII. In the Mainstream of French Army
Tradition 410
Bibliographical Note 433
Abbreviations and Short Titles Used
in Footnotes 441
Index 453
Xl

Preface
IN JUNE 1940, the French Army, as Europe had known
and feared it since Louis XIV, vanished in the dust of the
most overwhelming defeat so far suffered by a modern
nation. There follows a natural caesura in French Army
annals. Insofar as the words "French Army" appear in the
vocabulary of World War II after 1940, they usually apply
to units far from French soil, to that little band of gallant
exiles around Charles de Gaulle. It is hardly surprising
that the Free French have monopolized the name of
"French Army": active combat attracts attention, under
dog status invites sympathy, and sacrifice demands respect.
Popular admiration in the Allied countries was quite
rightly stirred by the stubborn Gaullist affirmation that
"France has lost a battle, but she has not lost the war." It
was only one jump to the further conclusion that there
existed no French Army except Fighting France; that
Fighting France was the root stock from which there
sprang a new French Army in 1943 to fight in the Allied
campaigns of Italy, Normandy, and Provence.
This book attempts to fill the caesura in French Army
history after June 1940. The French professional officer
corps, though stripped of most of its arms and men, sur
vived as a self-aware and cohesive social group. It not only
survived; it played an active role in the Vichy regime. The
overwhelming majority of French career officers rallied
with enthusiasm to the work undertaken by the most au
gust of their number, Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain. The
Armistice Army in the Unoccupied Zone of metropolitan
France and in North Africa was a characteristic Vichy
institution. More than that, the Armistice Army was the
root stock of the postwar French Army, upon which com-
VIl
Preface
paratively small Gaullist and Resistance branches could
later be grafted. The Armistice Army was the mainstream
of French Army history.
As the immediacy of battlefield exploits recedes, other
aspects of military history come to the fore. It becomes
permissible to interest oneself in an officer corps for its
social and intellectual character rather than for its military
laurels. I have been concerned less with "battles and lead
ers" than with the tone of an important social group and
its part in public life. I have searched for the essential con
tinuity of the French professional officer corps between
1939 and 1946 rather than for its more celebrated, but per
haps ephemeral, interruptions. I have turned my attention
to the contribution made by officers to the Vichy regime,
rather than to the strictly military aspects of the Armistice
Army. And I have tried to examine the new freight of in
tellectual baggage taken on by officers during the Armi
stice Army years, in the belief that it was not all unloaded
again in 1945.
I have not attempted to interpret the whole meaning of
the Vichy years for France; still less to trace the army
troubles of the 1950's back in any determinist fashion to
the very different vicissitudes of the 1940's. Nevertheless
the Vichy years were a seed-time for many postwar military
growths: a heightened determination to influence the edu
cation of French youth; an increasing fixation upon an
international conspiracy working to undermine French
values; a reinvigorated concern for Empire, the last crutch
of French grandeur, and a heightened suspicion of British
and American designs upon that Empire.
This book is the extensive revision of a thesis submitted
to Harvard University for the degree of doctor of philoso
phy. At the conclusion of a long labor to which many
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Preface
people contributed, it should be more than a pious tradi
tion to thank them publicly. They were responsible for
whatever good features it might have; as for its bad ones,
they would have known how to avoid them. H. Stuart
Hughes devoted his usual wisdom and generosity to direct
ing the dissertation upon which this book is based. Raoul
Girardet, of the Institut d'etudes politiques of the Uni
versity of Paris, first recommended the Armistice Army as
a field of study and helped arrange important interviews
and access to sources. I owe a special debt to Stanley Hoff
mann of Harvard University, whose articles and whose
personal advice were an unmatched guide to the workings
of the Vichy regime and to sources of information about
it. Robert Aron made a gesture altogether in keeping with
the largeness of spirit of his classic Histoire de Vichy: he
gave me access to his own notes and sources.
A number of people let me use some of their personal
papers: General Paul A. Bourget, Colonel Clogenson, M.
Andre Desfeuilles, Captain Daniel Devilliers, Inspector-
General Pierre Jacquey, Mme Jean de Lattre de Tassigny,
Navy Captain Henri Laure, M. Pierre Martin, General
Emile MoUard, M. Dominique Morin, M. Henri Nogueres,
General Paul de la Porte du Theil, General Edmond Ruby,
Colonel Raymond Sereau, and General Guy Schlesser.
None of them necessarily accepts any or all of my opinions.
In addition, approximately fifty persons, mostly senior
officers, were kind enough to grant me interviews. As their
names already appear in the text of this book where they
are essential, and as many of them preferred not to be
quoted directly, I have chosen to thank them collectively
and anonymously.
A number of institutions put their facilities at my dis
posal: the Bibliotheque de Documentation Internationale
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Preface
et Contemporaine in Paris; the Service Historique de
l'Armee, and especially General Charles de Cosse Brissac
and M. Andre Golaz; the Centre de Documentation Juive,
in Paris; the Hoover Institution, and especially Mrs. Agnes
Peterson; the United States Department of State; and the
United States National Archives, where Mr. Robert Wolfe
put his extensive knowledge of captured German military
archives to work on my project.
Finally, the Sinclair Kennedy Scholarship Fund of Har­
vard University made possible a year's residence in France,
and the Institute of Social Science at the University of
California at Berkeley helped with the expenses of prepar­
ing the manuscript for publication.
ROBERT O. PAXTON
Berkeley, California
March ιφ$
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