The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach

by Alice Kaplan

On February 6, 1945, Robert Brasillach was executed for treason by a French firing squad. He was a writer of some distinction—a prolific novelist and a keen literary critic. He was also a dedicated anti-Semite, an acerbic opponent of French democracy, and editor in chief of the fascist weekly Je Suis Partout , in whose pages he regularly printed wartime denunciations of Jews and resistance activists.

Was Brasillach in fact guilty of treason? Was he condemned for his denunciations of the resistance, or singled out as a suspected homosexual? Was it right that he was executed when others, who were directly responsible for the murder of thousands, were set free? Kaplan's meticulous reconstruction of Brasillach's life and trial skirts none of these ethical a detective story, a cautionary tale, and a meditation on the disturbing workings of justice and memory, The Collaborator will stand as the definitive account of Brasillach's crime and punishment.

A National Book Award Finalist

A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

"A well-researched and vivid account."—John Weightman, New York Review of Books

"A gripping reconstruction of [Brasillach's] trial."— The New Yorker

"Readers of this disturbing book will want to find moral touchstones of their own. They're going to need them. This is one of the few works on Nazism that forces us to experience how complex the situation really was, and answers won't come easily."—Daniel Blue, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

" The Collaborator is one of the best-written, most absorbing pieces of literary history in years."—David A. Bell, New York Times Book Review

"Alice Kaplan's clear-headed study of the case of Robert Brasillach in France has a good deal of current-day relevance. . . . Kaplan's fine book . . . shows that the passage of time illuminates different understandings, and she leaves it to us to reflect on which understanding is better."—Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

Genres: History, Nonfiction, France, Biography, War, World War II, European History

308 pages, Paperback

First published April 20, 2000

Reviews

[Mikey B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating story of a French writer, Robert Brasillach, who not only supported the Nazis during the occupation (1940-44), but vehemently spoke and wrote against those who opposed in any way the occupation. For this he was tried for treason on January 19, 1945 and executed by firing squad on February 6, 1945. He was 35 years old. He is not the only French writer to have been executed.

Brasillach was a journalist, novelist , and poet. During the occupation he was editor at “Je Suis Partout” a pro-Nazi publication. His journalistic comments were hateful – to Jewish people, communists, to anyone who supported the French regime prior to 1940, and anyone who did not support Marshall Petain during the occupation (i.e. the French resistance). He denounced those who he suspected did not want to collaborate – some were imprisoned, tortured, or executed.

The author provides incisive comments on the short trial that convicted Brasillach – of the judge, jurors (4 of them), prosecutor, and defendant. The prosecutor received little red coffins in the mail for years; he was protected by a body guard (he also prosecuted at other trials). We get a chilling perspective of France during these years – 1944-45. The author speculates, I believe correctly, that if Brasillach had been tried after May 1945, at war’s termination, he would not have been executed. In 1944 and 1945 there were scores to settle and examples to be set.

Brasillach became a fascist during the 1930’s. He adored the growing fascist regimes of Italy, Germany and then Spain. I found him to be a detestable person who flung out vile words as if there were to be no consequences. It was as if he were in a literary bubble filled with venom. He was a “head case” in need of psychiatric help.

Interestingly some of the journalists he worked with have tried to resuscitate his literary career turning Brasillach into a martyr for the right-wing. Some of this group, who want to resurrect Brassilach, are also Holocaust deniers. What is also repugnant is that they have expunged many of the hateful comments, like denunciations and vicious anti-Semitic comments, from the memoirs they have made of Brasillach’s life.

This is an excellent work giving one a deeper understanding of the profound divisions created in French society by the German occupation. They continue to exist and evolve to this day.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an important if uncomfortable book. What is the progressive response to free speech in collaborative terms of Occupation? Should Celine have been shot? These are whimsical questions in lieu of a concerted response. I think the procedural response to the Brasillach affair deserves attention.

[ΠανωςΚ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Οι Αμερικανοί είναι μανούλες στη δημιουργία δραματοποιημένων ντοκιμαντέρ, ειδικά δικαστικού χαρακτήρα. Κάτι τέτοιο είναι και το βιβλίο αυτό (στα ελληνικά, από εκδόσεις Μοντέρνοι Καιροί, «ο άνθρωπος του εχθρού»). Γραμμένο από μιαν ιστορικό, δεν είναι βιβλίο ιστορίας. Δεν είναι (ευτυχώς;) ιστορικό μυθιστόρημα. Μοιάζει κάπως με ρεπορτάζ, με δραματοποιημένη ιστορική έρευνα. Θα μπορούσε να λέγεται και «Πορτρέτο ενός φασίστα» ή «Στο μυαλό ενός φασίστα» ή «Η δίκη ενός φασίστα» ή «Τι να (μην) κάνετε σε έναν φασίστα». Εξαιρετικά ενδιαφέρον. Η συγγραφέας μπορεί να καταλήγει στα δικά της συμπεράσματα, αλλά το κάνει με τέτοιο τρόπο ώστε να επιτρέπει και στον αναγνώστη να καταλήξει στα δικά του.
(επίσης, ο Αλμπέρ Καμί ήταν υπέροχος τύπος, όμως αυτό α) το ξέρεις ήδη β) φαίνεται άσχετο τώρα, αλλά διαβάζοντας το βιβλίο θα καταλάβεις γιατί το λέω)

Περισσότερο κόντεξτ: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytim...
και
http://www.biblionet.gr/book/103542/K...

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite some notable lapses during WWI and the McCarthy era, the Supreme Court has more often than not gone to great lengths to protect free speech, including that of neo-Nazis, the KKK and flag-burners. I wonder, though what the Justices of the time would have made of the anti-Semitic rantings of the French writer Robert Brasillach, who was convicted of treason and executed after WWII. In effect, the French Court concluded that Brasillach's writings had the same evil effect as the actions of Adolf Eichmann. Kaplan does a marvelous job of narrating the human as well as legal side of this story, with detailed portraits of Brasillach, the Judges, lawyers and jurors involved in the case. In the process, she demonstrates that the legal and moral issues were not as clear-cut as one might imagine. The important accomplishment of this well-written book -- which at times reads like a legal thriller -- is that regardless of your position on free speech and justice, Kaplan leaves you questioning your deepest convictions and principles. I've long considered myself a free-speech absolutist, but Kaplan had me changing my mind back and forth so many times that I wasn't sure what to think by the end.

[Juliette Arnheim · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is no doubt Brasillach was responsible for many lives lost as he had identified individuals in his writing that Vichy/Nazis picked up and killed as Jews or Resistance. However, his legal representation at the short trial and the poor persons selected as a jury of his peers make me cringe at the sentence of death. He alone was killed for "words" during trials in the interim post WWII period before the government of DeGaulle was in place. He, unlike others like him, chose not to flee to safety in other countries where he would later have returned safely to France and lived on. DeGaulle ostensibly rejected a plea for clemency. His is a cause for rethinking ALL judicial system processes, as death offers no do-overs.

[Maryann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Should we execute a man because of his thoughts and opinions even if they are vile when there is no evidence that his words caused harm to a specific person? That is the issue at the heart of this beautifully researched and well written micro history. Even though the book focuses on the works of Robert Brasillach and his trial for treason, it raises a number of thought provoking questions about the nature of what it means to collaborate with an occupying power and whether a death penalty is just punishment should one be convicted of it. The Germans did not pressure Brasillach to write articles in support of the German occupation. Even before the war, Brasillach was a well known member of the French right wing, wrote for fairly extreme right wing newspapers expressing his belief in fascism as the cure all for France's ills under the socialist government of Leon Blum. Kaplan explores Brasillach's writings through the society in which he lived, with enormous tensions between the left (Blum's government) and the right (French fascists). Kaplan then moves on to describe all of the "players" in this morality play: the prosecutor, the defense lawyer, the members of the jury and the judge. What emerges is the highly political nature of the trial which took place in January 1945 before the end of WWII. The new government under de Gaulle needed to show its newly liberated citizens that it will take draconian measures against collaborators. The trial of Brasillach provided the perfect venue for that statement.

Crime and punishment even in peacetime reflect the politics of its time. The pendulum swings from seeking vengeance to a more compassionate view towards offenders. It was bad timing for Brasillach that his trial was one of the first to be conducted. A number of Vichy officials who were clearly more culpable in collaborating with the enemy who were tried after the war ended got off with much lighter sentences. These officials, unlike Brasillach, had escaped to Germany when the Allies liberated France while Brasillach had turned himself in to the authorities. It is also unsettling to learn that under the system in place at the time, the only individuals who were eligible to sit as jurors were those who demonstrated acts of resistance against the German occupiers.

In the last two chapters, Kaplan described efforts by the prominent writers and thinkers who tried to get Brasillach's death sentence commuted because of their concerns for free speech and the legacy of this trial impacts French right wing politics (Le Pen) even to this day.

[Frannie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book's full title is The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach. After reading Sarah's Key, I was interested in learning more about life in Vichy France and a family member recommended this one (thanks Uncle Gary!). Robert Brasillach was a fascist French writer during World War II and was the only writer of any significance to be executed for treason following World War II. This book recounts his career as a writer, his anti-Semitism, his opposition to the French government and collusion with the Nazis, and finally his trial and execution. Along the way, the reader picks up some details about Vichy France.

(The term "Vichy France" refers to the French government between July 1940 and August 1944. This government was in place during the Nazi occupation of France and colluded with the Nazis pretty heavily. It didn't have much power outside of the occupied zone and was essentially under the thumbs of the Nazis.)

It took me a little while to get into this book. It was slow to build and made some assumptions about what the reader knew about the time period. I'm partly to blame for this - I'm new to the topic and this book is focused on a very specific event - but I would have appreciated a little better level set or introduction at the beginning. However, about half way through the book, additional characters are given full introduction (the lawyers, judge, and jury members at his trial), which helped build a clearer picture of what life was like in France during this time. The portion of the book focused on his trial and the people involved in it was the part I enjoyed the most and the part I felt like I learned the most from. Kaplan did a lot of research into the backgrounds of the four jury members and their little personal acts of resistance against the Nazis, which helped me get a better grasp on what French life was like during this time.

I will probably read another book or two on this topic, because I don't feel like I fully understand it yet. Reading The Collaborator gave me some new insight, but my no means provided a full picture of life in Vichy France.

[AC · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am not impressed by this book -- I always pull the trigger early, so take fwiw. The topic, the trial of Brasillach is really too narrow to hold my interest - Brasillach himself is a thoroughly mediorcre and neurotic figure. The more general, opening chapter - on the "making of a fascist writer" is itself quite mediocre and a missed opportunity.

[Dylan Matthews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like many excellent microhistories, The Collaborator is about nothing and everything. It's specifically about one particularly pathetic fascist hot take monger in Third Republic and Vichy-era France, and how the French legal system responded to his collaboration with the Germans once Paris was liberated. As Kaplan makes exceedingly clear, Brasillach was not special. He was not an especially accomplished poet or novelist. He was analytically sloppy essayist. He was not some could've-been-Proust cut short in his prime. He was a thug who used his newspaper to point out targets for the Gestapo to deport and/or kill.

But it's also about the market for opinion and the incentives it creates, specifically on the right; about the delusions of importance shared by French men and women of letters, both in favor and opposed to the verdict (one of the funniest sections involves Brasillach's lawyer arguing for his acquittal on the basis of his clever literary allusions, none of which the predominantly working-class jurors understand); about what words can do, when words can kill, what writers' responsibility is when words do kill.

My one wish is that the book dug deeper into Brasillach's specific Vichy-era denunciations; was the school master he called out arrested or killed based on his Je Suis Partout article? Were his pieces advocating the deportation of Jewish children and the rounding up and killing of Communists influential on the occupiers or the Vichyists? We are left with a sense that his writing plausibly could have killed, but maybe didn't.

That's a quibble in the scheme of things however, and demands an answer to a question of his writing's influence that is probably unanswerable. It's a tremendous book, and one whose conclusion mirrors that of Camus, the only literary figure who comes off at all well: Brasillach was a scumbag, and Brasillach deserved to live, not because he was innocent but because the death penalty is always wrong.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book grapples with questions that should interest me more than they do. What are words worth? How does the answer to the previous question change during wartime? What constitutes treason, or crime of any kind, when it amounts mainly to words?

American scholar of French history Alice Kaplan attempts to answer these questions by examining the case of Robert Brasillach. Brasillach was a fascist intellectual. In some ways, he’s the kind of far-right intellectual you don’t see much of anymore: a genuine homme de lettres, critic, novelist, poet, read by his intellectual opponents due to his power to shape the discourse from his post at the right-wing paper Je Suis Partout. In other ways, he’s a familiar figure: an edgelord and a shitposter, hiding by turns behind irony and sentimentality, the former mostly in his political/critical writings and the latter in his novels and poems.
He started out as a student with Action Francaise, the French royalist proto-fascist grouping, which had a significant intellectual wing to go along with its street fighters. Kaplan depicts Brasillach as being swept away by the romance of fascism as the ideology grew stronger. Always anti-democratic, Brasillach was enamored of the newness, youth, optimism, virility of fascism, the rallies and the parades and the in-group camaraderie and on and on. He was also a committed anti-semite, placing the Jews at the top of a list of enemies including leftists and parliamentarians that were supposedly degrading France. In his writings, he compares Jews to monkeys and rats, and when the time came, was entirely in favor of their being deported from France, most of them to their deaths in the concentration camps.

What exactly he did during the war became a bone of contention in the trial. He was drafted into the French army and taken prisoner by the Germans, where, already pro-Nazi, he began his formal career as a collaborationist. He continued writing during the Occupation, publishing pro-Nazi pieces, encouraging the puppet Vichy regime to crack down harder on dissidents, and living it up with his Nazi and collaborator buddies during a time of want for most French people.

To me, what renders a lot of the back-and-forth inspired by the Brasillach case that Kaplan tries to sort out moot is Brasillach’s participation in another favorite pastime of the contemporary far right: doxxing. In the pages of Je Suis Partout, Brasillach outed resistance members, communists, and Jews in hiding. Kaplan is careful to point out that we do not know if any of Brasillach’s doxes actually led to any arrests… but it wasn’t for lack of trying on Brasillach’s part. A doxxing then meant a lot more then mean phone calls and stalking by basement-dwelling chuds, it could mean torture and execution. As far as I’m concerned, even if you don’t think being a fascist is a punishable offense by itself, doxxing constitutes direct collaboration with fascist occupying authority with intent to kill.

The Resistance arrested him around the time Paris was liberated by the allies. Brasillach’s entire imprisonment and trial took place under the shadow of the ongoing war and France’s fledgling reconstruction of its own nationhood. The charge against him was treason- giving aid and comfort to the enemy and degrading the nation. Notably, his propagandizing for French participation in the Holocaust was not emphasized in the case, happening as it did before the Nuremberg Trials came up with the idea of crimes against humanity- otherwise, they could’ve gotten him like they got Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher.
Kaplan goes into great detail about those involved in the case, not just Brasillach. She discusses the two attorneys, for the prosecution and the defense, at great length. Both signed the Vichy pledge of loyalty to Marshal Petain; family legend has it the prosecutor helped the Resistance, but we have no real way of knowing. Virtually all of France’s lawyers signed the pledge- they were part of the state apparatus, after all, and Vichy was the state until DeGaulle had consolidated sufficient control over the Resistance (and the German grip slipped some). The jurors were drawn from lists of Resistance-friendly Parisians, and Kaplan profiles them, too, telling about their lives mostly in the working class suburbs of Paris, their small but noble acts of resistance, etc.

Brasillach’s lawyer tried to get him out of it by citing his career, from the high-end Ecole Normale to his collections of poetry and translations- not, Kaplan points out, the sort of thing that would appeal to this jury. Moreover, Brasillach himself came to compare himself to the Resistance, in poems and statements- both were just carried away by difficult times and ideology, or something like that (something tells me we may see contemporary fascists try that one before it’s all over). Nobody bought it. The prosecution layered on — and thereby made the whole thing “problematic” — insinuations of Brasillach as being gay or womanly, as being in love with the Nazis, a way to further inflame and disgust the jury. I agree that’s messed up, though Kaplan herself seems to agree there was a distinct erotic edge to Brasillach’s feelings for fascism. Either way, the jury voted to convict and execute Brasillach.
He appealed to de Gaulle to save his life, and so did a number of prominent French writers (including Camus but not including Sartre or de Beauvoir, for those keeping score at home). French intellectuals had become alienated from the purge of collaborationist elements and the complicities and complexities it continuously revealed. De Gaulle refused- some say due to being confused by a picture of Brasillach with French fascist leader Jacques Doriot, where Doriot was in German uniform and de Gaulle thought Doriot in uniform was Brasillach in uniform. Either way, Brasillach was shot, and became a martyr to the French far right to this day.

Kaplan concludes by saying that Brasillach should have been found guilty of treason, but not have been executed. I tend to disagree and think that his doxxing during wartime earned him a bullet. I see Kaplan’s point about making martyrs, but a living Brasillach could be an inspiration to the French far right, too. Speaking extra-judicially, I think Brasillach got what was coming to him, and think he should serve as an example to other fascist propagandists. ****

[Guy Cabell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Kaplan writes an excellent history of a complex tale: a Fascist, anti-Semite writer who helped the Nazi occupiers of France achieve their goals through his writing. Mr. Brasillach comes across as someone who was abused at some point in his life, and so lashes out in the most extreme manner against those he dislikes, in a manner of someone who is very afraid. During the Occupation, he called for the death of Jews and communists en masse. After the restoration of the French Republic, he was tried for treason, convicted, and shot. The question remaining is: can someone's writing actually be construed as treason? It is a question for today, since there are many Robert Brasillach's on the extreme right wing in the USA whose writings are equally inflammatory. One difference is perhaps that Brasillach's writings were in the service of the Nazis, hated occupiers of France, while the USA has no occupiers. One could conceivably make the case, however, that the current Brasillachs help Russia undermine American democracy and its alliances, and so are as treasonous as Mr. Brasillach. Dr. Kaplan concludes the book with an explanation of how Mr. Brasillach's brother-in-law conceived the concept of Holocaust denialism, and how Mr. Brasillach has become a martyr and icon for France's current extreme right-wing party, the National Front.

[Allyson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have long wanted to read this book and reading French Lessons as well as so many books about collaboration in France during WWII caused me to be thrilled to find it in a used bookshop.
However I was less impressed than I had expected, and hoped. She presented the facts quite well but the first part dragged somewhat and jumped around too much. And overall it felt somewhat disjointed. I did not read the extensive notes but will do so upon a second read sometime in the future.
Her scholarship and interest in this subject are worthy and important additions to the study of collaboration and it’s continued effect in present day France.

[Gonzaga Escauriaza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aunque a veces describe con demasiado detalle a todos los personajes que intervienen en el juicio, fiscal, defensor y juez, porque no hay testigos, la obra es interesante porque te explica que en el periodo entre la liberación de París y el final de la guerra mundial había una obsesión por hacer purgar a los colaboracionistas incluso con la pena de muerte.
Yo creo que si a este escritor lo hubiesen juzgado un año más tarde no lo hubiesen ejecutado.
De Gaulle fue muy duro no conmutándole la pena de muerte por cadena perpetua.

[Michael Greer · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are many reasons to read Alice Kaplan's book. I will only give one. I also consider this enough of a reason to read the book today. Nothing could be more important.

"This trial (the author is speaking of the trial of Robert Brasillach for collaboration) remains one of the most vivid rhetorical representations we have of France coming to terms with the German Occupation, and one of the first extended public conversations about what happened in France between 1940 and 1944."

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a required book for my 1945 in Europe history class. The book was very well written and incredibly detailed so I can see why it was nominated for various book awards. I’m not really into non-fiction history books so I found it to be pretty boring at times, but that’s probably just a me problem. If it wasn’t for this class I would’ve never known this book even existed, but I guess I’m glad that I read it because I did learn a lot.

[Kaylyn Ahn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This analysis of Brasillach is incredibly interesting. This is the essence of what it means to put the very ideology of Nazism on trial, the political and historical context of the French government as it rebuilt itself, and how the very ego of the defendant and his attorney impeded the very argument that could have got him acquitted. I read this in 2 sittings.

[Lauren Herzfeld · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Joe Oberst · Rating 4 out of 5]

For class - interesting

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Riveting.

Chronicles the life and trial of Robert Brasillach, a prolific and controversial French critic who was executed for treason, at age 35, after France's liberation from the Nazis. A fascist-leaning writer known for his defense of Nazi crimes, he was the only distinguished writer put to death by the postwar French government.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book examining the responsibility of artists in relation to politics. Brasillach was the only writer executed for collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. Details the trial, the evidence. Turns out that Brasillach not only fully collaborated but in a newspaper he edited regularly posted details that he heard about where people wanted by the Germans were hiding out.

[Zach Opsitnick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read about someone in WWII that many people don't know about. Was it the right decision to make? That's hard to say now, so far removed from the event. But you'll definitely form a strong opinion one way or the other after the read.

[RUSA CODES · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the 2001 RUSA Notable Books winners. For the complete list, go to http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rus...

[Marianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent, thorough, thoughtful review of the complex case of Brassillach's acts and fate. History, right to speech, politics, anb philosophical questions all abound in this well done book.