- Spotts, Frederic.
The Shameful Peace.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.
ISBN 978-0-300-13290-8.
-
Paris between the World Wars was an international capital
of the arts such as the world had never seen. Artists
from around the globe flocked to this cosmopolitan environment
which was organised more around artistic movements than nationalities.
Artists drawn to this cultural magnet included the Americans
Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude
Stein, Henry Miller, e.e. cummings, Virgil Thomson, and
John Dos Passos; Belgians René Magritte and Georges
Simenon; the Irish James Joyce and Samuel Beckett; Russians
Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Vladimir Nabokov,
and Marc Chagall; and Spaniards Pablo Picasso, Joan
Miró, and Salvador Dali, only to mention some of the
nationalities and luminaries.
The collapse of the French army and British Expeditionary
Force following the German invasion in the spring of
1940, leading to the
armistice
between Germany and France
on June 22nd, turned this world upside down. Paris found
itself inside the
Occupied Zone,
administered directly by
the Germans. Artists in the
“Zone
libre” found themselves subject to the
Vichy
government's cultural decrees, intended to purge
the “decadence” of the interwar years.
The defeat and occupation changed the circumstances of Paris
as an artistic capital overnight. Most of the foreign expatriates
left (but not all: Picasso, among others, opted to stay), so
the scene became much more exclusively French. But remarkably,
or maybe not, within a month of the armistice, the cultural
scene was back up and running pretty much as before. The theatres,
cinemas, concert and music halls were open, the usual hostesses
continued their regular soirées with the customary attendees,
and the cafés continued to be filled with artists
debating the same esoterica. There were changes, to be sure:
the performing arts played to audiences with a large fraction
of Wehrmacht officers, known Jews were excluded everywhere,
and anti-German works were withdrawn by publishers and self-censored
thereafter by both authors and publishers in the interest of
getting their other work into print.
The artistic milieu, which had been overwhelmingly disdainful of
the Third Republic, transferred their scorn to Vichy, but for
the most part got along surprisingly well with the occupier.
Many attended glittering affairs at the German Institute and
Embassy, and fell right in with the plans of Nazi ambassador
Otto Abetz
to co-opt the cultural élite and render them, if not
pro-German, at least neutral to the prospects of France
being integrated into a unified Nazi Europe.
The writer and journalist
Alfred Fabre-Luce
was not alone in waxing with optimism over the promise of the
new era, “This will not sanctify our defeat, but on
the contrary overcome it. Rivalries between countries, that were such a
feature of nineteenth-century Europe, have become passé.
The future Europe will be a great economic zone where people,
weary of incessant quarrels, will live in security”. Drop
the “National” and keep the “Socialist”, and
that's pretty much the same sentiment you hear today from
similarly-placed intellectuals about the odious,
anti-democratic European Union.
The reaction of intellectuals to the occupation varied from
enthusiastic collaboration to apathetic self-censorship and
an apolitical stance, but rarely did it cross the line into
active resistance. There were some underground cultural
publications, and some well-known figures did contribute to
them (anonymously or under a pseudonym,
bien sûr), but for
the most part artists of all kinds got along, and adjusted
their work to the changed circumstances so that they could
continue to be published, shown, or performed. A number of
prominent figures emigrated, mostly to the United States,
and formed an expatriate French
avant garde colony which would play a major part in the shift
of the centre of the arts world toward New York after the
war, but they were largely politically disengaged while the
war was underway.
After the Liberation, the purge
(épuration)
of collaborators in the arts was haphazard and inconsistent.
Artists found themselves defending their work and actions
during the occupation before tribunals presided over by
judges who had, after the armistice, sworn allegiance
to Pétain.
Some writers received heavy sentences, up to and including
death, while their publishers, who had voluntarily drawn up
lists of books to be banned, confiscated, and destroyed
got off scot-free and kept right on running. A few years later,
as the
Trente Glorieuses
began to pick up steam, most of those who had not been
executed found their sentences commuted and went back to
work, although the most egregious collaborators saw their
reputations sullied for the rest of their lives. What could
not be restored was the position of Paris as
the world's artistic capital: the spotlight had moved on
to the New World, and New York in particular.
This excellent book stirs much deeper thoughts than just those of how
a number of artists came to terms with the occupation of their
country. It raises fundamental questions as to how creative people
behave, and should behave, when the institutions of the society in
which they live are grossly at odds with the beliefs that inform their
work. It's easy to say that one should rebel, resist, and throw one's
body onto the gears to bring the evil machine to a halt, but it's
entirely another thing to act in such a manner when you're living in a
city where the Gestapo is monitoring every action of prominent people
and you never know who may be an informer. Lovers of individual
liberty who live in the ever-expanding welfare/warfare/nanny
states which rule most “developed” countries today will
find much to ponder in observing the actions of those in this
narrative, and may think twice the next time they're advised to
“be reasonable; go along: it can't get that bad”.
September 2009 