-
Chapter 5: Resistance
- Fordham University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
5 Resistance For approximately three decades after the Liberation the official story of World War II in France was one of Resistance. The sixty children’s books on the war published by 1948 emphasized the heroism of the Resistance while hardly mentioning the role of the Allies in liberating the nation and entirely avoiding discussing the camps or the fate of the Jews. In these books all of France, including children, takes part in expelling the Germans. De Gaulle assumes the heroic role that Pétain had played in Vichy literature, while Joan of Arc takes on the clothing of the Republic and the Resistance. The Marvelous Adventures of General de Gaulle as Told to the French Children became the model for this new type of hagiography, which was based on the general’s concept of himself as France’s providential leader. De Gaulle, in turn, established the parameters for this mythical concept of the Resistance in his August 1944 address from the balcony of the Paris City Hall: ‘‘Paris! Paris outraged! Paris broken! But Paris liberated! Liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the support and the help of the whole of France, of France that is fighting, of France alone.’’ Only as an afterthought did he mention the Allies.1 In the early 1970s, notably following the publication of Robert Paxton’s groundbreaking work on Vichy and the release of Marcel Ophuls’s powerful documentary, The Sorrow and the Pity, the myth of a nation of resisters led by De Gaulle was exploded. As greater attention was given to the camps, the fate of the Jews, collaboration, the National Revolution, and French fascism, a new understanding of them and appreciation of their importance emerged, reducing the Resistance to a less significant, even divisive element in the story. Yet, in recent Resistance | 135 years, the Resistance has experienced a minor revival as historians have discovered its diversity, resilience, and magnitude. Not all French resisted, but neither did they all collaborate as some revisionism suggested . The history of the Resistance deserves a place, once more, at the center of the story of France during the war, although a center that has been enriched and qualified by scholarship on the dark side of the war years. The narrative of the Resistance is a complex one, not the simple heroic account that General de Gaulle provided in his memoirs. If one is to believe the general, the Resistance began with his famous BBC speech of June 18, 1940, in which he appealed to the French people to continue their struggle against the Germans rather than capitulate. But almost no one in France heard this message, and if they did they probably discounted it, since de Gaulle had no authority upon which to base his appeal. In the weeks and months that followed, very few prominent French politicians, businessmen, or military figures rallied to his side. Most members of the national elite were suspicious of him and many were hostile to his cause. At the time, given France’s desperate circumstances, it seemed better to follow the Marshal and sue for peace, hoping that French sovereignty would be preserved and reforms undertaken to revive the nation. Very few political figures understood, as de Gaulle did, that France’s defeat was only the first skirmish in a war that would engulf the entire world before it was over.2 But de Gaulle did possess certain advantages in 1940 that allowed him to emerge eventually as the dominant figure in the external and, eventually, the internal Resistance. Most importantly, he had the support of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who recognized him as a soul brother, someone determined to fight the war to the bitter end. Although Churchill’s relations with de Gaulle were turbulent, leading him at times to threaten to sever ties with the general, they survived the war intact, to the benefit of both of them and their causes. In the summer of 1940, Churchill’s government gave de Gaulle’s Free French movement the recognition it needed to begin to form a quasigovernment -in-exile, intent upon uniting the French behind a military movement that would eventually retake control of France. If Churchill [35.168.113.41] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 04:57 GMT) 136 | france during world war ii had not encountered de Gaulle during the last days of the Third Republic , the external Resistance would certainly have taken a different path. As it...