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H-DIPLO Roundtable Review of Julian Jackson's _France: The Dark Years
1940-1944_ (Oxford, 2001)

Roundtable Editor: Peter Jackson

Roundtable Participants: Jackie Clarke, Rod Kedward, Simon Kitson, Peter
Jackson

H-Diplo Roundtable Editor: Diane Labrosse

[Please note that all diacritics have been removed -- DL]

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Rod Kedward
School of European Studies
University of Sussex


Three areas of discussion arising from Julian Jackson's _The Dark Years
1940-1944_

1. Ensemble

In his _Memoires_ Raymond Aron quotes at length from Lucien Febvre's
review of his writings in _La France libre_ during the war. The essence of
Febvre's positive critique lies in his statement that Aron's monthly
_Chronique de la France_, written in London, set out to enable the world
to understand "l'ensemble de la realite franaise". [1] This phrase can
happily be applied to Julian Jackson's magisterial history. The key word
is l'ensemble with its active image of bringing things together, things
which would otherwise stay apart.  The passage in Aron is worth looking
up, both for his reasons for reproducing the comments of the distinguished
_Annales_ historian and for Febvre's anticipation of future studies,
which, he hoped, would use Aron's writings on the Occupation as a spur to
compare the ways in which French people in different places and
circumstances, and with different set ideas, reacted to the same events.
Febvre died in 1956 before he could see this happen, but even he could not
have foreseen the extent to which relativity has swept the board in the
historiography of the period. We are now at the point where everything is
in the plural: _les_ Vichy, _les_ resistances, _les_ collaborations, _les_
liberations, and, naturally enough after Pierre Nora, _les_ lieux de
memoire and _les_ memoires themselves. No published titles have yet used
the ultimate relative terms, "_les_ defaites" for 1940 or "_les_
occupations" for 1940-44, but researching them in plural ways through
differences of individual, local and group experience has implied that
nothing in this period can really be detached from the relativist gaze.

But surely this applies to all periods of history, all aspects of life.
Isn't it just a truism? In one sense, yes of course, and I won't labour
the point. But in another sense it's much more than that. Establishing the
plurality of meanings in this particular period of French history has been
a struggle against rigid categories and exclusive classifications, mostly
reinforced by political agendas or entrenched interests of one kind or
another. There is still much more to be done.  Julian Jackson's fine book
confidently inhabits this pluralist world, without addressing it in any
theoretical way. His awesome range of reading and his incredible agility
in deploying it, make the book a model of judicious history. Within his
preferred triadic area of politics, personalities and ideas, no stone is
unturned, and there are also plenty of signs that he could just as easily
have increased the number of pages devoted to considerations of economics,
culture, locality, and gender.  But whereas for some historians pluralism
and relativism impose an absence of judgement and priorities, or
fragmentation and a stress on the aleatory in history, there is little, if
any, of this in the book. Julian Jackson's aim is clearly expressed at the
end of the Introduction:  "...the history of France in this period must be
conceived as a whole.  There are strands but they make up one history."
(p.20) So if the book is self-consciously plural throughout, and
explicitly so in some of the headings (e.g. Anticipations, Liberations)
this is more as a means to inclusiveness rather than as a demonstration of
relativity. It is ensemble playing of exceptional quality, with a huge
cast and ample instrumentation.

Plurality is mostly represented as complexity or ambiguity, and in Part 1
"Anticipations" we are given complex, ambiguous roots or long-term trends
as a background to the complexities and ambiguities of the Dark Years. On
p.83 there is a construction which is typical of the section:  "Just as it
is too simple...so it would be wrong..." With such an acute multilinear
sense, this background section makes very few direct causal connections
with policy or ideas in the period of 1940-44 itself. It sets out to avoid
determinism and teleology. I'm sure that's right for the early chapters
1-5. But Chapter 6 on "The Debacle" does not belong under "Anticipations".
The Nazi-Soviet pact, the defeat and _exode_, the Armistice,
Mers-el-Kebir, and the vote of 10 July are no longer background or roots
and certainly not long-term trends; they are the very start of the Dark
Years, just as complex but with more discernible lines to subsequent ideas
and events. The chapter could have been in a pivotal section of its own,
_sui generic_.

The familiar problem raised by presenting most things as complex is how to
represent views and experience which were significant at the time
precisely because they were uncomplicated. The book allows the committed
or strident voices of the time to come through clearly, but the framework
is consistently one of historical understanding: the role of the historian
in explaining, defining, comparing and contrasting is explicit throughout.
Julian makes no bones about it. "How then," he asks on p.242, "does one
characterize Joliot's conduct?" and on the following page, "Even if
collaboration exists, defining it remains very difficult." On every page
we are aware of his historical hand, and what is impressive is that we
enjoy this continual presence as a tour de force. For example, the concept
of superimposed but ill-fitting maps (pp.246-252) is immensely suggestive.
It is his own construct, but we come to imagine it as a reality of the
time, so that when he starts the next sub-section with "It was against
this background...that Vichy set about..." (p.252) it seems an entirely
acceptable statement of fact. This is the historian's craft expertly
exemplified.

We could all add other players and more instruments to the ensemble, and
stretch Part 1 to breaking point, or make Parts 2, 3 and 4 totally
unmanageable, but I don't think omissions can possibly be an issue here.
In the spirit of the book, however, we should look carefully at Part 1 to
see how the plurality of resistance was "anticipated", when? and by what?
or by whom?  It is very easy to get trapped into thinking that only Vichy
and collaboration have a pre-history. To take only one example,
trade-unionism in the wake of the Popular Front is a particularly fertile
ground for anticipations of resistance (e.g. Pineau in the CGT, Morandat
in the CFTC) though ambiguity, as the book shows, is there in plenty. The
fault-lines drawn on p.80 ran also through Belin's _Syndicats_: Pineau was
a member in 1938-9. Julian Jackson indicates why Belin's attitudes in the
late 1930s anticipate his involvement with Vichy, but why do Pineau and
Morandat become pioneers of Liberation-nord and Liberation-sud? [2] If
pre-war evidence about them might help provide the answer, how does a
historian present "anticipations" of individual choices without falling
into determinism? This is more than a question of information. It is about
the role of biography in general histories. Something of this was in
Febvre's mind when he expected the ensemble studies of the future to
embrace psychology. He also added geography. [3] Place, across time, is
still a relatively unexplored determinant, and, of course, just as complex
and ambiguous.

2. Post 1989

I think it is clear that Julian Jackson's stress on complexity is not a
product of post-modernist theory or techniques which might have led him to
equalise or atomise the different facets of the period. This he does not
do. But what about post-1989 revisionism? There is no explicit reference
to that either. The revisionist interpretation of anti-Communism as
resistance does not play any role in the concluding chapter of the book.
There is reference to the "anti-Communist agenda in the attacks on Moulin"
and the "latent anti-communism" in the attacks on the Aubracs (pp.630-1).
But the whole "other" version, which claims that the crusade against
Bolshevism during the war was the resistance, does not feature in the
Epilogue. I am not necessarily suggesting that it should do, though it is
an area in which many graduate researchers in France, in the UK and the
USA try to grapple with the fall-out from the widespread post-89 equation
of Stalinism and Nazism, which is different in impact from the polemic of
the Cold War.

There is very little secondary literature as yet on the attempts by
militants of the Far Right in the 1990s to endow Vichy's Service de
propagande anti-communiste with heroic resistance status. But there is a
mass of documentation in the national and local archives on the Service
which needs to be looked at with the same sense of complexity that
pervades _The Dark Years_. At the moment, post-89 considerations tend to
merge with material such as Dominique Venner's writings which construct a
Resistance continuity for the Far Right, running from Vichy to Algerie
francaise.  [4] This is a totally alternative reading of the Occupation,
thickly entangled with anachronism. It is mostly received as a flagrant
rewriting of the past.


This revisionist debate is bound to feature in some review or other of
Julian Jackson's book, if it has not already done so. For if it does not
constitute a sub-section in his last chapter, neither has it in any way
obviously influenced his presentation of the role and significance of
Communists either before or during the Occupation. I do not have space to
go into this in detail, but I would argue that his skill in dealing with
ambiguities is most perceptible in his keen analyses of PCF policies and
attitudes. Undoubtedly one of the most striking aspects of the book is the
persistent evidence that the history of the PCF from 1941-44 can be read
in one, or both, of two ways: a) Communists were essentially out to
control the resistance, by all means and particularly by infiltration. b)
Communists were the most adept and successful at creating, sustaining and
diversifying resistance. It is particularly the latter which emerges
strongly from the book.

The theme which is not explicitly expressed but threads in and out of the
many passages on the PCF, is not so much the "conspiracy"  "entryism"
"ideology" or "control" of Communists (though that is perceptively
analysed) but rather their capacity for responding to the challenges of a
constantly changing situation, including "their ability to voice the
aspirations of many ordinary resisters" (p.474). Morandat in his
_Souvenirs inedits_ comments in precisely this way. He was no friend at
all of the PCF and he writes his memoirs in the first years of the Cold
War, and yet he says of the period immediately after Hitler's invasion of
Russia:  "C'est a ce moment que les communistes firent leur apparition en
tant que resistants actifs. Et comme a leur habitude, _ils y entrerent
avec des methodes et des moyens qui surpassaient largement les notres._
Tracts et journaux pullulaient." (my italics)  [5] If aptitude for
resistance is stressed we come closer to the research of Franois Marcot
and many others who are asking the question "What did resistance need?"
This is a critical and creative way into the shifting nature, politics and
sociology of resistance. It asserts the primacy of the situation at the
time and avoids the seductions of anachronism.  Julian forcefully points
this out on p.478.  [6]

3. A question of darkness

In the 1980s, runs the subtitle on p.12, there was a shift in the
historiography of the Dark Years "from regime to society". Many
researchers feel that the micro-history of locality and culture is the
only way into "l'ensemble de la realite franaise" and the book recognises
the importance of this in the numerous social and cultural topics which it
discusses. It is well aware of "the proliferation of local studies"
(p.13), and the attention it gives to some of their findings acknowledges
the importance of studying _la vie quotidienne_. For a number of
historians inside and outside France the crux of local studies is not only
the complexity they bring to _les annes noires_, but also the opportunity
it gives them to dispel myths about people's experience. Not everyone
suffered from the Occupation.  But it is also well-known that local,
everyday life during the Occupation is far from a discrete topic: it can
be shown to relate, or not to relate, to the divisive issues of the period
in a vast variety of ways, depending not just on the variables of
locality, class, gender etc. but as usual on the approach of the historian
and the questions posed. In this respect it is worth looking at a double
edition of the _Cahiers de l'IHTP_, published in 1996, on "Le temps des
restrictions en France (1939-1949)". Thirty IHTP correspondents from a
range of dpartements specifically investigated the effect of food controls
and shortages on everyday life in their area. The aim of the research was
to produce comparative economic data from some regions and explore the
effect on public opinion in others. The conclusions are rich in
similarities and variations, but the difference in approach heightens the
discrepancies. Few of the correspondents attempt to generalise from their
local data. But Jean-Marie Guillon for the Var substantiates a familiar
model which is clearly exportable to other regions: penury as the catalyst
for social tensions. For everyone experiencing penury there is a social
"other", "elsewhere", who is accused of causing the misery or prospering
from it, and Guillon has meticulously, as ever, researched a whole list of
"others" and "elsewheres", often designated within the local society. [7]
It makes the sheltering of foreigners and strangers in any locality even
more remarkable.


And then there is the "other" region or departement. The Mayenne is the
best example, just south of Normandy in the Pays de la Loire, which was a
main source of provisions for Paris and an area where the research
suggests that there was virtually no penury. "La Seconde Guerre mondiale",
conclude Remy Foucault and Jacques Renard, "n'est pas pour la Mayenne _une
periode noire_." (my italics)  [8] This certainly dispels any residual
myths of universal suffering, but should the term be used in this way?
Should the day-to-day standard of living in any area be the criterion for
measuring the "darkness" of the Occupation? It seems a provocatively
limited usage and it is certainly not the one in _The Dark Years_.

It could be that we need metaphors other than darkness to convey the
heteroclite experience of Occupation and illuminate neglected social
paradigms and identities of the period.  There have been suggestions such
as _les annes sur-reelles_ to capture the universal sense of heightened
awareness. Every alternative has its problems but the search will
undoubtedly continue.  I am sure that contributions to this discussion
will produce a range of new ideas. I am equally certain that Julian
Jackson's book does not need a new metaphor: he shows just how much
enlightenment can still be brought to the old. It is a work of remarkable
integrity and understanding.


Rod Kedward

Notes:

[1] Raymond Aron, _Memoires. 50 ans de reflexion politique_, Julliard,
1983, pp.173-4.

[2] Julian Jackson uses Pineau's memoirs (1983) and the separate histories
of the two Liberation movements by Alya Aglan (1999) and Laurent Douzou
(1995) respectively. There are also the _Souvenirs inedits_ of Yvon
Morandat, edited by Laurent Douzou and published by the IHTP in _Les
Cahiers de l'IHTP_, No.29, September 1994, and Alya Aglan's chapter on
"Christian Pineau ou l'imperatif democratique" in Pierre Guidoni and
Robert Verdier (eds), _Les socialistes en Resistance,_ Seli Arslan, 1999.

[3] Aron, p.174

[4] See the subtle review by Hugo Frey, "Dominique Venner: Arms and the
Man" _Modern and Contemporary France_, Vol. NS4, No.4, 1996, pp.509-512.

[5]Morandat, see note 2, p.114

[6] See his note 12 on the same page, and also Francois Marcot, "Apres six
colloques sur La Resistance et les Francais" 19-20._ Bulletin du Centre
d'histoire contemporaine_, University of Franche-Comte, Besanon, No.2,
1998

[7] _Les Cahiers de l'IHTP_, Nos. 32-33, May 1996, pp. 439-452.

[8] Ibid. p.100

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