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World Hotels - Vichy France
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List Price: $31.00
Our Price: $27.90
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Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 944.0816
EAN: 9780231124690
ISBN: 0231124694
Label: Columbia University Press
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 438
Publication Date: 2001-09-15
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Studio: Columbia University Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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-- Los Angeles Times
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Landmark Work
Comment: Robert Paxton is the supreme authority on the Vichy regime. This, his seminal work, was originally published in the 1970s and has been updated with a new preface. Despite the availability of additional data, the book stands with very few qualifications as originally written. Vichy, despite the claims of it's many apologists, neither protected nor served France and the French, with the exception of various professional elites, who seamlessly transitioned from Petain's regime to the Fourth Republic and, in some instances, to the Fifth. Petain and his confreres met little, if any, indigenous resistance because virtually all Frenchmen were disgusted with the Third Republic and craved a more ordered and traditional form of government, an authoritarian one, in a word. Petain was happy to oblige, basing the regime on the assumptions that the war would be short, Germany would be victorious, the (despised) British holdouts would soon be defeated and, most importantly, domestic revolution would be avoided. This last point cannot be overestimated in the conservative, Catholic society of mid-century France. The leftist riots of February 6, 1934 left an indelible impression which Vichy could and did use to telling effect. It should be recalled that de Gaulle stood virtually alone. Most Frenchmen, especially those in military and government service chose to support the regime, even to the point of fighting the British in North Africa, not only in relatively well-known engagements at Mers el Kabir, but also in Syria and domestically in Dieppe. Vichy mostly hoped to achieve parity with Nazi allies in a German-dominated post-war Europe, also hoping to retain their colonial empire under exclusive French administration. Paxton recalls all these details and plenty more, along with a welter of statistical detail which somewhat slows the narrative. Even so, the work is exceptional and a classic of the historian's art.
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Summary: Revolutionary
Comment: This book represented a revolution in the historiorgraphy when it first came out thirty years ago and its lasting importance is shown by the fact that it is still seen as one of the key texts on the period. It played a vital role, alongside studies by people like Jackel and Hoffman and the film the Sorrow and the Pity, in changing the way people thought about the Vichy regime. This change was based on two things. Firstly the recognition that Vichy had actively sought collaboration with the Nazis rather than having it imposed on them. Secondly by highlighting that Vichy's political programme, including its anti-semitism, was home-grown and not just a Nazi import. The regime's anti-semitism was further developed in Paxton's follow-up book, Vichy France and the Jews.
Vichy France, Old Guard and New Order remains very useful today, particularly in highlighting that Petain's regime was not a homogenous block but rather made up of diverse currents. Paxton is very, very good at explaining these currents. Where the book seems dated is in its under-estimation of French Resistance and it's very negative assessments of public opinion. Few historians working today would take Paxton at face value on those two elements. But this remains nevertheless a very worthwhile book and a must for anyone hoping to understand the Vichy regime.
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Summary: The French Quest for Collaboration
Comment: I used this book as the main source for a term paper I recently wrote on Vichy France. Although it is now a bit dated-it was originally published in 1972-it was a groundbreaking work when it was first published. With this work, Mr. Paxton destroyed the myth of the massive French Resistance to the Germans that was propagated for many years after the war, mostly by the French themselves. He thoroughly describes how it was France, not Germany, who sought greater collaboration between the two countries, and that many more Frenchmen than would like to admit wholeheartedly embraced the new fascist policies. And while of course there was a genuine resistance movement, Paxton sees the post-war witch hunt of "collaborationists" as basically a persecution of the guilty by the guilty. To this day, Vichy is still a touchy subject for Frenchmen and Paxton brilliantly exposes exactly why that is. This is an extremely well-written and comprehensive work on Vichy France and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
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Summary: An unfair book for France
Comment: While « Anatomy of Fascism » is a well balanced and very interesting book, « France's Vichy » ignores the context of France in 1940. The book is unfair to France and eventually very wrong.
- First of all, one must remember that France desperately attempted to establish PEACE in Europe after WWI. France had been alone to stop Germany in 1914, the English not yet in the war, and in 1920 it was exhausted. The only thing France wanted was PEACE. (Aristide Briand received the NOBEL Price). It begged the US and UK to guaranty its borders against Germany. But the US walked away from the committment Wilson had made to France in 1919... In fact what happened is that both the US and UK supported Hitler's Germany in the thirties against France to the extent that Churchill was the lonely voice warning of the "awful danger" of "perpetually asking the French to weaken themselves". It can be said that the Anglo-Saxons' Francophobia was a defining factor in letting Hitler establish power. Not only it was a disaster for France, the world but also the Jews.
- Secondly to accuse France of rampant antisemitism is just not true. There was antisemitism, especially among the elite, but it was not expressed in the laws. France was the only country in the world to keep its borders open to all the refugees from Germany and Eastern Europe. They all came to France. And the Prime Minister of France in 1936 was Leon Blum, a very remarkable Jew. When is America going to vote for a Jewish President? So before 1939, France's behavior towards the Jews was one of the most friendly in the world. The US closed their borders and showed no pity. America had the land and more to welcome the Jews. In fact, a coordinated effort by the Anglo-Saxon world - US, UK, Canada & Australia - plus France, would have saved the Jews from Hitler !
- Thirdly, France was badly defeated in 1940. How could it be otherwise? France was not strong enough to resist Germany alone. And France was alone, the US having run away after leaving a mess in Europe in 1919, plus forcing France to weaken itself, and the UK, as usual, had no army and also very quickly run away... Dunkirk!
When France was badly defeated, and it was, everybody trying to escape from the German advance, documents show that Laval "forced" parliament to give all the powers to PETAIN. It was "a coup", not something which happened in normal circumstances. And PETAIN was an antisemite, the people around him also. In time of a major upheaval/disaster, a senile man and bad people took power. The French never voted for them. But again, the French disaster was the result of American policies in the thirties.
It is in this context that the Jews in France suddenly faced an hostile administration. Nobody in France can be proud of what happened. People who had come to France trusting the French tradition of hospitality, were betrayed. There is little excuse for such letdown though many French people did their best to help.
Quite rightly Paxton is critical of the French elite. No quarrel with that but it was a worldwide phenomenon. Just to give a personal example: my father, after the war, went to America on a business trip. He was a guest of a fancy Oyster Bay Golf Club and he invited Miss Rothschild, a first class French golfer to join him. The third time he took her there he was told that he was welcome but not the Jewish woman... and this happened after the war!
A lot more can be said. In the last fifty years, America kept alive its love for dictators with appaling results : Chiang Kai-Shek, Pahlevi, Marcos, Pinochet and above all Stalin to whom Roosevelt gave Eastern Europe....
Etc... I am not an historian. But I would like to see the rightful and arrogant America apologize to the Jews, as Chirac and France did. May be, to achieve this result, Mr. Paxton needs to write a book : "American anti-semitism in the 20th century and its consequences". France is the wrong fight, America is a better one, the real one is the top of the Catholic church: the pope.
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Summary: On the review of Mr J. Adams
Comment: The book in question was written by Mr Paxton as a thesis for his PHD at Harvard in 1963 and was later published in 1966 by Princeton University.
The infamous Vichy regime rightfully denounced by Mr Paxton enjoyed the offcial embassy of Admiral Leahy helped by the friend and personal representative of President Roosevelt, Robert Murphy [despite the existence of the Free French government in London]. The fact that France is a member of the security counsel of the United Nations results from the fact that the Free French supplied the biggest contingent of men after the launching of Torch [landing in north Africa) and stayed alongside their American allies in the Japanese war.
You should check that, at Yorktown, Washington was actually defeated by the English when the French army and the French fleet captured the British army and fleet... before offering this victory to Washington. There was no lend-lease for the French support to the young American republic and you never heard a French regretting it. It's a matter of style.
You should also check that only the down payment of the Louisianna deal was actually paid because Napoleon got ultimately defeated by the British. France never made a territorial claim for that.
You should learn that despite the infamous Vichy regime which came to power by a coup and not by a democratic vote, the Jewish community of France is the one who survived the most of all the occupied countries (don't believe me check with Raul Hilberg's book), again despite this truly infamous regime.
Of the two friendly country which one should be criticized for its support is a truely open debate.
You should check that the grand father of president Bush was sentenced under the "Trading with the ennnemy act" for his partnership with nazis in mining investments in Upper Silesia, that President Kennedy's father was recalled from his position as Embassador in London for his openly expressed nazi sympathy...
You should however learn that, to this very day, Americans showing their American passports in most of the restaurants of Normandy don't have to pay for their bills because the French are still grateful to the American people.
You should know that the French population, even when they politically disagree with the American government, keep their friendship for the American people intact and their sympathy for young American soldiers on the front. There are many dark periods in American history as well (ask the Japanese Americans for exampple, or the Eastern Europeans offered to Stalin at Yalta for American control over western European economies: cf Churchill's memoirs).
The French do not resent Robert Paxton for his studying of a dark period in French history, but you should also read the cynical view of President Roosevelt toward the dismantling of the French empire reported in "The way he saw it" by his son Elliott.
The French keep saluting the American men and women, for they risked or lost their lives in France, or their blood or just a part of their youth to combat Hitlerite tyrany in what Pressident Roosevelt, after the Tehran conference didn't call "freeing France" ... but "Invasion of France".
Every American is wellcome to France no matter what! Our friendship pre-dates English friendship.
The book of Mr Baxton is an excellent book but it must be completed by "our Vichy Gamble" by William Langer and other readings like Raoul Aglion's "Roosevelt & deGaulle Allies in conflict" to understand France in the second world war.
It is not so clear to know which one of these two friendly countries has a greater work to do for cleaning its own doorstep. It takes more courage and intelligence to listen to one another points, than to spit hate for recently frustrated foreign policy. Leadership is not dominance, friendship is not obedient slavery and patriotism is not narcissic craving for military power.
For avoiding any readers'possible prejudice or misconception, it must be stated that the present reviewer's father, born catholic, spent years in the worst concentration camps for resisting the nazi policy towards Jewish people [he had already been arrested, tortured and deported when America did land in North Africa].
Among the four liberties presented by President Roosevelt were the liberty of speech, the liberty of opinion and the liberty from fear.
Let's drink to Robert Paxton having the liberty to fearfully express, with talent and personality, his political vision on an infamous French regime, and the French having the right of criticizing without fear the foreign policy of their American friends.
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