Dreams from the Dark Years: Aperitif
- cepmurphywrites
- Aug 5
- 5 min read
By Paul Hynes.
Here’s a question for you, did France win or lose the Second World War?
If you are from an American or British background you would probably say they lost it. They surrendered, after all. The reasons for surrender can be political or military, or both. Francophobes will often go as far as to claim it was a default of the French character. Regardless of the reasoning, it happened.
Although the two most prominent events in the Anglosphere’s popular memory of the war in Europe, Dunkirk and D-Day, occurred within France, the French themselves are not present for them. They are reduced to a cameo in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk and background scenery in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan.
French involvement in the Second World War after the Spring of 1940 is reduced to romantic acts of resistance in popular portrayals such as in The Longest Day or farcical ones in ‘Allo ‘Allo, both whilst waiting for foreign armies to save them. The simplistic narrative often portrayed is that the French surrendered, then resisted, then the Allies were welcomed into Paris in 1944 and France was restored.
A more objective, detailed account might point to the fact that France entered the Second World War as a major power and ended it as such. French troops occupied Germany along with the Big Three of the UK, USA, and USSR. A French delegation accepted the German surrender alongside representatives of these other powers. France would remain a global superpower until colonial misadventures throughout the fifties reduced its influence.
However, we then have to contend with the fact that France was ruled by a pro-Nazi regime for four years. This period is what Professor Julian Jackson has termed the "Dark Years" of 1940-44 where most of metropolitan France was occupied by Nazi Germany and administered by the French State, more commonly known as "Vichy France" from where its administration was based.
Vichy, when not associated with sun cream, has become a byword for collaboration and treachery in the English language similar to "Judas" or "Quisling" and the regime is often dismissed as Nazi imposed stooges who lacked any legitimacy or popular support. This ignores the fact that it was internationally recognised by most of the Allied powers for much of its existence.
The Vichy regime, rather than being imposed, was very much made in France. Even the early French resistance started out as largely sympathetic to the Vichy regime, or at least sympathetic to its leader Maréchal Philippe Pétain. As late as 1944 some elements within the rebuilding French republic would insist Vichy’s goals hadn’t been all bad.
The "Free French" who had stayed loyal to the Allied cause struggled to be taken seriously. Their leader, Charles de Gaulle, could hardly be considered to be fighting to restore the republic or even democracy in 1940. Many within the Allied camp would suspect him of Fascist sympathies, whilst others feared he would be a Kerensky figure who might open the door to a Communist revolution. It was for these reasons and many others that he would find himself constantly beset by attempts to replace or undermine him by both his allies and his compatriots. The Free French forces he led would be composed largely of French colonial subjects whom de Gaulle considered unworthy of autonomy or even recognition for their efforts. In the colonial sphere he was almost indistinguishable from Vichy policy.
It could be easy to chart French progression through the war beginning with defeat and occupation, collaboration and resistance, leading to liberation and then victory. However, this glazes over a tangled web of contradiction and myth. Historiography of the Dark Years has undergone three major shifts; the third is currently transforming popular French attitudes in a major way.
American and British historians have had a significant impact in these changes in understanding, particularly the American historian Robert Paxton. Nonetheless, they have failed to have much of an impact in the popular understanding of the French experience in their own countries.
Since the end of the Second World War, historiography has portrayed the French people as a nation of resistors, then as a nation of collaborators, and more recently as a nation of largely inattentive people detached from both groups and focused on their own survival. It has led some to characterise the Dark Years as a sort of French Civil War where the victors were keen to forget their enemies existed only for them to reappear throughout French society and in popular memory.
The Second World War encompassed several civil wars. It had a prelude in the Spanish Civil War, it paused the Chinese Civil War, and it provoked and then ran parallel to the Italian Civil War. In the case of France, however, it was more of a flash point in a fault line which had been running through French society since the end of the eighteenth century. Pétain was born in 1856, closer in years to the French revolution of 1789 than the future birth of the Vichy state in 1940. His opinions on the former would significantly influence the latter.
The Third French Republic would be born in civil war as both the bourgeoisie and the nascent proletariat came up with their own alternatives to the failed attempts of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte to emulate his uncle. The bourgeoisie would win, the Paris Commune being crushed with much bloodshed; however, the French working class, their trade unions and parties, would continue to fight for a better future where they might partake in the fruits of their labour.
The old monarchists would continue to yearn for a Napoleon figure, or perhaps a Hitler, over the French left. Some stated they would prefer Hitler himself over the French socialist Prime Minister, Leon Blum. When Germany defeated France in 1940 one prominent right-wing figure would describe it as a “divine surprise”. De Gaulle, a conservative monarchist himself, would refuse to accept France being defeated and would go on to help save French republicanism.
Most liberal parliamentarians would vote to dissolve the Third Republic they had defended and willingly handed power to Pétain. One particular liberal deputy, Jean Moulin, would attempt suicide rather than countenance collaborating with the German occupiers. Three years later he would be tortured to death by the Gestapo, having successfully united the French resistance under a single leadership.
The Communist party would briefly contemplate negotiations with the Germans, having been banned for their anti-war activities in the last days of the Third Republic. They would go on to harness their skills in clandestine organising to become the largest and most effective resistance to the occupation. In post-war France the Communists would declare themselves “the party of the 75,000 martyrs” and downplay or deny their momentary flirtation with collaboration.
It’s safe to say that throughout these confused narratives you can come to the conclusion that France neither won nor lost the Second World War. A certain vision of France was lost in 1940 and a new one emerged in 1944. Despite contemporary claims, the French Fourth Republic was a different regime than the Third. There were several different versions of France which could have triumphed otherwise.
This series will examine some of these possibilities. Dreams, or nightmares, of a France which never was. It will examine different points of divergence, some well-known and others less so, which might have dramatically changed the fate of France, Europe, and the world. In these dreams from the Dark Years, monsters will become saviours and heroes will become traitors. Figures well known to you will wear different masks and those unknown will appear to horrify or inspire.
You may awake to remember these things didn’t happen. But part of you might recall they nearly did.
Sleep tight, and au revoir.
Paul Hynes is the author of the Decisive Darkness series and the Red Fuhrer series.
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