Living with the Enemy: German Occupation, Collaboration and Justice in the Western Pyrenees, 1940–1948 by Sandra Ott (review)

Sandra Ott’s new book sits at the intersection of history and anthropology, scrutinizing the unique interactions of the French, the Basques, and the Germans in wartime France. Drawing on postwar trial dossiers, newspaper accounts, memoirs, and archival documents, Ott focuses her study on ordinary people who became involved with the German occupiers of the French Basque region, with the dual aim of reconstructing their lives during the war and examining postwar justice in the Pyrenean borderlands. The research is grounded in archival work, but is enhanced by the wealth of interviews and extensive fieldwork that Ott has conducted in the French Basque country.

In some ways the Basque country was unique: its location on the Franco-Spanish border made it an important center of multicultural, multilingual, and multinational exchanges. Its geography also made it important as a potential escape route and for black market activities. While some people welcomed the region’s diversity, others complained about the foreigners in their midst, creating tensions that could be exacerbated during wartime. Unlike in other parts of France, Germans stationed in the region sometimes stayed there for a considerable length of time, allowing them to establish personal relationships with locals. Furthermore, the Germans had a long-standing interest in the Basque’s unique language and culture as an example of the völkisch tradition. German scholars traveled to the region, recorded Basque legends, folktales, and songs, and published books and films related to Basque ideas of community. One French Basque nationalist maintained a relationship with Werner Best throughout the 1930s and while Best was stationed with the MBF in Paris.

The book is divided into two main sections. The first provides the context while the second provides nine microhistories of individuals accused of “collaboration” with the Germans. The contextual information includes the cultural, social, and political background of the region, which is crucial for understanding the relationships formed between the French, the Basques, and the Germans during the war. Ott also provides information relevant to the postwar period including information on the Liberation and the judicial system as well as concepts that are central to the historiography of World War II, including accommodation, cohabitation, and collaboration. Throughout this first section, Ott balances the macro and the micro, placing the specific case of the Basque region within a wider French and European perspective.

The true heart of the book is Ott’s careful reading of the postwar trial dossiers. Ott has chosen a cross-section of society for her analysis, including men and women, teenagers, urban and rural inhabitants, and “insiders” and “outsiders” in the community. The individuals brought before the Courts of Justice in Pau were accused of acts such as establishing relations with the enemy, endangering the lives of French citizens, holding antinational sentiments, and threatening national security. But even more than the accusations themselves, Ott is concerned with the relationships between the French and the Germans. It is here that she applies an ethnographic approach, drawing on concepts from anthropology, such as hospitality, commensality, and gift exchange. These concepts are particularly appropriate in this cultural context, given the Basque view of “the house as a private space in which domestic commensality served as an agent of social solidarity” (37) and where only certain people were viewed as acceptable guests for meals. Inviting a German into one’s home or dining with them held particular significance in the community and also in the trials. What emerges from these case studies is a picture of the complex reality of living with the enemy, including ambiguous interactions, opportunistic calculations, strained familial relations, and ideological commitments. It also becomes clear that justice was often applied inconsistently.

While the focus of Ott’s book is evidently on a particular French region, the Germans are more “visible” and more central in this study than in many histories of...