The Politics of Apoliticism: Political Trials in Vichy France, 1940-1942

220 Pages·2019·1.347 MB·English

by  James Herbst

James Herbst
The Politics of Apoliticism

James Herbst
The Politics
of Apoliticism
Political Trials in Vichy France, 1940–1942
ISBN 978-3-11-060721-5
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-061016-1
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-060743-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 2018965087
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Cover image: A diagram of the seating arrangements at the Supreme Court in Riom, unattribut-
ed newspaper clipping, Box 23, Series GE, Archives d‘Histoire Contemporaine des Sciences Po.
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
www.degruyter.com
Contents
 Introduction 1
 “No other explanation seemed possible” 24
 Certain ideas of France 39
 Making Vichy’s Trials 63
 Riom as National Revolution 86
The Evils of the Political 92
From Politics to Indiscipline 93
From Indiscipline to Hierarchy 96
From Hierarchy to Irresponsibility 97
From Irresponsibility Back to Politics 100
An Overarching Category: Leadership 101
Leadership and the Army 103
A Case Study: The Cunin Report 108
 Reynaud, Mandel, Auriol: The Limits of Legalistic Apoliticism 111
Mandel and Reynaud 112
The Leca-Devaux Affair 117
The Conseil de Justice Politique 126
Honor/Dishonor 134
An Unsuccessful Prosecution of a Leftist: The Strange Case of
Vincent Auriol 138
 Riom as Parliament 142
The Newspapers and the Start of the Trial 143
The Newspapers and the Trial’s Failure 149
The Magistrates 152
Conclusion: The Suspension of Legal Norms 160
 The Massilia Affair and the Clermont-Ferrand Desertion Trials 163
Differentiation of Sentencing 167
The Magistrates 168
Mendès France 170
Alex Wiltzer 175
VI Contents
Jean Zay 182
Pierre Viénot 186
 Conclusion 189
From Riom to Human Rights 195
Bibliography 203
Printed Sources 203
Newspapers 204
Secondary Sources 204
Index 209
1 Introduction
Treasondothneverprosper,what’sthereason?
Forifitprosper,nonedarecallittreason.
‒JohnHarington
In1940,ameretwenty-twoyearsafterits admittedlyambiguoustriumph inthe
Great War (1914–1918), the French Army experienced perhaps the most abrupt
and total defeat ever suffered by a great power. Other great powers have been
humbled in war with equal speed; Napoleon’s 1809 campaign against Austria
comes to mind. Another such case was France itself in 1870. France then, how-
ever,hadmanagedtoholdoutforanotheryear.Incontrast,the1940catastrophe
was unique in its combination of rapidity and thoroughness. In six weeks,
FrancewasreducedfromoneofEurope’stwoleadingmilitarypowers‒theSo-
vietarmy,recentlyhumiliatedinFinland,waswidelyconsideredtobeofdoubt-
ful quality ‒ to the status of a client state of Nazi Germany. It was the Third
Reich’s only fully successful campaign against a great power.
Within weeks, France had not only lost her independence but also her lib-
erty. The collapse of French pluralism¹ was as drastic as her military defeat.
Formuchofthenineteenthcentury,Francehadbeenabywordforrapidchanges
ofregime.Alfred,LordTennyson,hadmockedthemforitinhis1847poemThe
Princess,only ayear before France experiencedyet another short-lived shift to-
wards democracy:
Butyonder,whiff!therecomesasuddenheat,
Thegravestcitizenseemstolosehishead,
Thekingisscared,thesoldierwillnotfight,
Thelittleboysbegintoshootandstab,
Akingdomtopplesoverwithashriek
Likeanoldwoman,anddownrollstheworld
Inmockheroicsstrangerthanourown;
Revolts,republics,revolutions,most
Nograverthanaschoolboy’sbarringout.
From 1875 on, however, France seemed to have settled on a durable pluralistic
system. The Third Republic was prone to scandal and rapid cabinet turnover,
but it seemed to be, as the former moderate monarchist Adolphe Thiers once
 WomenwereforbiddenfromvotingundertheThirdRepublic,aswereMuslimAlgerians;but
thereisnonethelessarealsenseinwhichFrancemovedfrompopulartoauthoritariangovern-
mentunderVichy.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110610161-001
2 1 Introduction
commented, the form of government that divided the French least.² In spite of
the resurgence of political divisions in the 1930s, especially after the election
of the left-wing Popular Front in 1936, most of the French continuedtosupport
partiesespousingoneversionoranotherofrepublicanism.In1940,however,as
theWehrmachtapproachedthefleeingFrenchparliament’snewheadquartersin
Bordeaux, an overwhelming majority voted full powers to Marshal Philippe Pé-
tain, France’s only living marshal and a national hero due to his record in the
First World War. Pétain was to draw up a new constitution, and, apart from a
provision that the result would have to be ratified by the Assembly (honored,
as it proved, more in the breach than the observance), nothing guaranteed
that the result would be democratic. Indeed, “the Marshal,” as he is still popu-
larly known, promptly issued a series of “constitutional acts” that swept away
the Republic and replaced it with an authoritarian regime inwhich he reserved
allpowerforhimself.Thenewregimewouldbenamedafterthecitytowhichthe
French government had moved after Bordeaux:Vichy.
Even as the French Army continued to crumble, some political leaders still
hoped to hold out in the reduit bréton (the Breton peninsula) or in France’s
vast North African colonies. On June 22, however, Pétain signed an armistice
agreement, a day after thirty parliamentarians had boarded the Casablanca-
bound Massilia in the mistaken impression that the rest of the government
would follow them. The Pétain government immediately portrayed this act as
one of betrayal, as a panicked flight rather than as an attempt to continue the
fight. Soon after, it began to seek to give this portrayal juridical form in the
shape of the prosecution for desertion of four of the Massilia deputies: Jean
Zay, Pierre Mendès France, Pierre Viénot and Alex Wiltzer. They were taken
into custody on 31 August 1940. A month earlier, Pétain and Vichy’s Minister
of Justice, Raphaël Alibert, had established a new court,the Cour Suprême (Su-
premeCourt)atRiom,withjurisdictionoverformerministersandtheirimmedi-
ate subordinates. Pétain, granted power by the same parliament that had
launchedthePopularFrontgovernmentin1936,hadbeguntheprocessoftarget-
ing prominent Popular Frontists for a trial at Riom, which was finally held in
1942.
The interveningeighteenmonthshad notbeen encouragingfor thegovern-
ment’sjudicialpolicy.ThreeoftheMassiliadeputies–Zay,MendèsFrance,and
Viénot–weresuccessfullyprosecutedinthecourseof1940–41byamilitarytri-
bunal at Clermont-Ferrand,but thiswas the extentof thegovernment’ssuccess
 MichaelButler,Sellinga“Just”War:Framing,Legitimacy,andUSMilitaryIntervention(Basing-
stoke:PalgraveMacmillan,2012),230.
1 Introduction 3
inprosecutingitsprecursors.Thesametribunal–indeed,thesamemagistrate–
who convicted Zay and the other deputies refused even to indict former Prime
Minister Paul Reynaud and his Minister of the Interior, Georges Mandel. The
Riomtribunaldraggeditsfeetseeminglyinterminably,tothepointthatanimpa-
tientPétainoverrodethewishes ofhisnewMinisterofJustice,JosephBarthéle-
my (who had replaced Alibert in February 1941), and instituted a new hand-
picked Conseil de Justice Politique to pass sentence on the Riom defendants. It
dulydidsoonOctober15,1941,butthefactthattheRiomcourtcontinuedtode-
liberatewasanindicationofhowlittlecredibilitytheConseil’sverdictpossessed,
even at Vichy.
Meanwhile, international events had also turned against Vichy.The regime
was predicated on the assumption that the war was over and Britain would
quickly capitulate or, in the famous words of Vichy’s Minister of National De-
fense,MaximeWeygand,“haveitsnecktwistedlikeachicken’s.”³Neitheroccur-
red.The establishment of the Cour Suprême had taken place in the wake of the
British bombardment of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir on 3 July, 1940, and
consequentlyatalowpointinFranco-Britishrelations;butFrenchopinioncon-
tinuedtobelargelyfavorabletoaBritishvictory.⁴InJune1941,theBritishinva-
sionofSyriabegantoremoveasecondcomponentofVichy’sself-legitimation–
its continued possession of France’s colonies. A series of diplomatic initiatives
throughout 1941 gradually brought the United States closer to participation in
the war, and made the prospect of ultimate Germanvictory,which had seemed
socertain in thesummerof1940, appeartorecedestillfurther.The German in-
vasionoftheUSSRinJune1941,initiallyhighlysuccessful,hadboggeddownby
theautumn.ByFebruary1942,whentheRiomcourtfinallyconvened,itwasno
longer a triumphant initiative by the victors in France’s domestic quarrels so
much as a desperate attempt to rescue the government’s crumbling legitimacy.
It did not succeed in this goal.The Riom trial was a disaster for the Vichy
government. Uniquely among show trials, it failed to result in a conviction,
and the 1942 hearings were in fact so embarrassing to the regime that the trial
had to be placed on what proved to be an indefinite hiatus.Tardy in its prepa-
ration, the trial was also slow in its execution: by the time it was suspended,
after a month and a half of hearings, only a minute fraction of the witnesses
had been called. Bycontrast, Philippe Pétain’s own trialwouldtakeonly twen-
ty-threedays(July23toAugust15,1945).The extraordinaryspectacle ofashow
 MichaelCurtis,VerdictonVichy:PowerandPrejudiceintheVichyFranceRegime(NewYork:
ArcadePublishing,2002),64.
 PierreLaborie,L’OpinionFrançaisesousVichy(Paris:Seuil,1990),244.
4 1 Introduction
trial that took a year and a half to prepare and failed to accomplish any of its
goals demands explanation.
This book will argue that the failure cannot be blamed on the way German
demandsshapedthetrial,because,farfrombeingtheresultofforeignpressure,
RiomwasfundamentallyaboutdomesticFrenchpolitics.TheGermaninterestin
the trial was primarily about demonstrating that France and not Germany was
responsible for the war, and it was they who summarily ended the trial when
it proved not to consider the question of war guilt at all.This conflict between
NaziandVichyviewsofwhatthetrialshouldaccomplishwasnotalast-minute
development. From the beginning, Riom had been designed to show not that
France was responsible for the war, but that Vichy’s structures of government
wereright,becausethepreviousstructuresofgovernment–inparticular,thein-
trusion of politics (that is, debate) into the apolitical realms of administration,
justice,defense, and economic policy – had led to the defeat.
ThiscritiqueofthelateThirdRepublicwasnotnew.Awidevarietyofpolit-
icalfigures,fromÉdouardDaladieronthelefttoAndréTardieuontheright,had
spent the interwar years trying to recast France along more technocratic lines.
Onegroupofsuchlike-mindedindividuals,theRedressementFrançais,wouldin-
deed provide the primary inspiration for the trials. Implicit in their analysis, as
intheworkofmanylaterphilosophersofdemocracysuchasClaudeLefort,⁵was
the idea that public policy consisted of two separate spheres: the “political”
sphere,where public debate was necessary, and the “apolitical” sphere,where
aneliteconsensushadalreadybeenreachedandfurtherdebatewouldonlyun-
dermine good government. Pushing sensitive political topics such as economic
policyintotheapoliticalsphereofpureadministrationheldinherentantidemo-
craticelements,buttheinterwarRedressementFrançaisdidnotseeitsactivities
inthatlight.Rather,theirirritationattheignorantmassesimpingingonspheres
of which they knew nothing bore a considerable resemblance to today’s Dubai
Consensus on economic policy. Philosophically, it was closer to the American
pragmatisttraditionofC.S.PeirceandWilliamJames,withtheirrespectforsci-
enceandlimitationofthesphereoflegitimatedoubt,thantotheanti-democrat-
ic theorists of Nazi Germany.The members of the Redressement Français were
merely reiterating the basic insight common to all theorists of democracy that
 See, for example, Lefort’s discussion of the relationship between democracy and rights in
ClaudeLefort,ThePoliticalFormsofModernSociety:Bureaucracy,Democracy,Totalitarianism,
ed. John B. Thompson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986), 239–272. Lefort was much better
awareoftheproblematicnatureofseparatingrightsfromdebate;theobjectiveofhisanalysis
wastocreatethepossibilityofaleft-wingpoliticsbasedonarespectfor,ratherthanaMarxist
rejectionof,theideaofhumanrights.