The War Guilt Problem and the Ligue Des Droits de l'Homme

307 Pages·2019·2.745 MB·English

by  Norman Ingram

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THE WAR GUILT PROBLEM AND THE LIGUE
DES DROITS DE L’HOMME, 1914–1944
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The War Guilt Problem
and the Ligue des droits
de l’homme, 1914–1944
NORMAN INGRAM
1
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1
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Acknowledgements
This has been, as the French would say, un travail de longue haleine. I began work
on the Ligue des droits de l’homme in 1991 while still a Canada Research Fellow
at the University of Alberta. My book on interwar French pacifism had just come
out and I was eager to follow up leads on the origins of what I called ‘historical
dissent’. This dissent over the origins of the Great War became one of the progenitors
of the new-style pacifism that emerged in France in the interwar period. In 1991,
there were no Ligue archives to speak of. The Ligue’s papers had been seized by the
Nazis in June 1940, shortly after their arrival in Paris following the defeat of France,
and were presumed lost. Madeleine Rebérioux, the Ligue’s first woman president
and an eminent historian of the early Third Republic, confidently told me that the
Nazis had burned the Ligue’s papers. I found this a questionable assumption and,
sure enough, the Ligue’s papers were returned to France in 2001 from the former
Soviet Union where they had languished as war booty since 1945. The papers were
opened to historians in 2002 and I began working on them the following year. Alone
among historians of the Ligue, I have followed the archival trail to Germany in an
attempt to find out what the Nazis were doing with these papers.
I have incurred many debts to institutions, colleagues, students, and friends
while working on this book. I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada for providing me with a research grant from 2004 to
2008 which enabled me to do much of the primary research for this book in Paris
and Berlin. I am deeply thankful to the archivists and librarians at the following
institutions: the Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine,
Nanterre; the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; the Archives Nationales,
Paris; the Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris; the Archives de la Préfecture
de Police in Paris; the Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères; the Archives
départementales du Gard, Nîmes; the Bibliothèque Municipale de Nîmes; the
Institut d’Histoire Sociale, Paris; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Magdalen
College Library, Oxford; the University of Edinburgh Library; the University of
St Andrews Library; the Hoover Institution for War and Peace at Stanford; the
Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, Paris; the Wiener Library, London;
the Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Berlin; the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin;
and the Bundesarchiv in Berlin-Lichterfelde.
I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Sonia Combe, then the director of
archives at the Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine,
who allowed my research assistant and me to digitally photograph large parts of the
archives of the Ligue des droits de l’homme—to the point where another archivist
at the BDIC floating by the Reserve room one morning was heard to exclaim,
more than a little ironically, given the context, ‘Monsieur le Canadien est en train
de piller nos archives!’
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vi Acknowledgements
At critical junctures, I was blessed with fellowships at three great universities,
which enormously facilitated the writing process. In 2009, I was the inaugural
fellow in the Centre for French History and Culture of the School of History at
the University of St Andrews, to whose then director, Professor Guy Rowlands,
I am particularly grateful. During Hilary Term 2017, I was elected to a Visiting
Fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford, which was a tremendously stimulating
place to work; I am grateful to the President and Fellows of Magdalen for provision
of this fellowship. From April to June 2017, I was elected to a Visiting Research
Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University
of Edinburgh; my office overlooking the Meadows with a view south to the Pentlands
was a marvellous place to work and I am very thankful for the fellowship.
I have been blessed with four truly exceptional PhD students at Concordia
(Andrea Levy, Marie-Eve Chagnon, Sebastian Döderlein, and Audrey Mallet), and
two more at McGill (Cylvie Claveau and Emmanuelle Carle), of whom I am very
proud; they have all challenged me in varying ways and I record my thanks to them
here. One of our honours students, Denis Robichaud, worked two summers for
me in Paris, digitizing documents; his work was invaluable. In the early 1990s, three
research assistants, Pierre Cenerelli, Christian Roy, and above all, Cylvie Claveau,
worked under my direction preparing a huge analytical database of the contents of
the Cahiers des droits de l’homme from 1920 to 1940. The heart of this database is
the ‘subjects’ rubric for everything that was ever published in the Cahiers; it is not
merely a listing of names, organizations, and places but far more importantly an
analytical rendering of the topics covered in the 7,270 articles and other entries,
long and short, contained in the Cahiers.
I am also very thankful to a host of colleagues and friends who have listened
patiently to my thoughts about the Ligue des droits de l’homme. In Canada, they are
Ken Mouré, Pat Prestwich, John Cairns, Jo Vellacott, Talbot Imlay, Robert Tittler,
Fred Bode, Linda Derksen, Travis Huckell, and Michael and Elva Jones. Andrew
Barros, both a good friend and a valued colleague, read the entire manuscript and
offered many helpful suggestions. In Germany, Peter Grupp at the Auswärtiges Amt
and Jana Blum at the Bundesarchiv were particularly helpful. In the United
Kingdom, many friends and colleagues have either heard me give papers about the
Ligue or have discussed the project with me. I record here my thanks to Jeremy
Crang, Jill Stephenson, Martin Ceadel, John Horne, Daryl Green, Ged Martin, John
Keiger, Guy Rowlands, Nick Stargardt, Sudhir Hazareesingh, Peter Jackson, and
Margaret MacMillan. In France, my thanks are due to Emmanuel Naquet, with
whom I disagree on many points of interpretation, but whose knowledge of
the Ligue is encyclopaedic, to Antoine Prost, the late Jacques Bariéty, Nicolas
Offenstadt, Matthias Steinle, and especially to Maurice Vaïsse, who has always
been most encouraging and supportive. I am also greatly in the debt of dear friends
in Paris. John and Claudia Moore and Charlie and Heather Tatham have all been
faithful friends over the years. I am thankful to the anonymous readers of Oxford
University Press for their helpful comments. The manuscript was expertly copy-
edited by Phil Dines. My editor at OUP, Cathryn Steele, has been wonderful.
It goes without saying that any errors in the text that follows are my fault alone.
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Acknowledgements vii
One person is especially deserving of my thanks. He is William Irvine, emeritus
professor of history at York University in Toronto. I first met Bill in 1989 at the
annual meeting of the Western Society for French History in New Orleans,
Louisiana. This was my first ever North American scholarly conference after my
PhD at the University of Edinburgh. The organizers had put my paper on French
pacifism together with two papers on fascism given by Bill and Bob Soucy, perhaps
under the assumption that politics makes strange bedfellows. Whatever the case,
I became fast friends with Bill and his wife, Marion Lane. He has been a constant
and tireless support ever since. His refreshingly iconoclastic and analytical book,
Between Justice and Politics: the Ligue des droits de l’homme, 1898–1945, has been
an inspiration when I have doubted myself.
Three other couples deserve special mention. My aunt and uncle, Janet and
Norman Patten, have been a constant presence in my life since I was five years old.
Just about every year since 1982, I have repaired to their wonderful house, ‘Tamarack’,
in Guernsey for a much-needed and restorative vacation. To Christopher and
Caroline Herbert, I express my heartfelt thanks. I was best man at their wedding and
they are my dearest friends in France. On every research trip to Paris, extending over
many years, they have hosted me almost every weekend at their home. My sister and
brother-in-law, Bernice and Curtis Hobbs, have also been wonderfully supportive
and generous. Bernice was disappointed not to be mentioned in my first book;
I hope that this goes some way to repairing the inadvertent damage and to under-
lining the esteem of an older brother for a much-loved younger sister.
Finally, this book is dedicated to the memory of my parents, to whom I owe so
much, and to my partner, Matthew Skelton, who is a far more gifted writer than
I shall ever be, and whose steadfast love has urged me on towards the prize.
Norman Ingram
Montréal,
June 2018
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Contents
List of Abbreviations xi
1. Introduction 1
I. THE GREAT WAR AND ALL THAT
2. War Origins: The Debate Begins 17
3. The Ramifications of the War Origins Debate: War Aims and
Ending the War 46
II. A LA RECHERCHE D’UNE GUERRE GAGNEE . . .
4. The Wounds of War (1919–24): Challenges to Orthodoxy on
the War Guilt Question 75
5. Bridge over the Abyss? Talking to the Germans 108
6. Turning the Page? The War Guilt Problem in the Era of Locarno 137
III. LES FLEURS DU MAL . . .
7. In the Shadow of the Swastika 181
8. 1937, or the Aventine Secession 217
9. Once More with Feeling? The Ligue des droits de l’homme and
the Slide into War 239
10. When All Is Said and Done . . . En guise de conclusion 265
Bibliography 269
Index 285