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The Purge: The Purification of French Collaborators After World War II
Describes the violent vengeance of the French Resistance upon the French collaborators and intelligentsia--those who wrote books and plays supporting Germany--after the Allied forces liberated France of German rule
- GenresNonfictionFrance
332 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1986
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64 people want to read
About the author
Herbert R. Lottman
33 books10 followersHerbert Lottman was an American journalist and author who spend most of his life in France.
He majored in English and biology at the University of New York, graduating in 1948 and earned a master’s in English from Columbia in 1951.
In 1956 he moved to Paris and became the manager of the Paris branch of the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He also was writing for Publishers Weekly for four decades and wrote a novel, Detours From the Grand Tour.
But he is most reknowned for his biographies on French personalities and his writings on French intellectual life.
He majored in English and biology at the University of New York, graduating in 1948 and earned a master’s in English from Columbia in 1951.
In 1956 he moved to Paris and became the manager of the Paris branch of the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He also was writing for Publishers Weekly for four decades and wrote a novel, Detours From the Grand Tour.
But he is most reknowned for his biographies on French personalities and his writings on French intellectual life.
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October 28, 2020
I decided to look for a book about how France dealt with collaborators after reading in Charles Williams’ biography of Phillipe Pétain a comment that 10,000 men and women had been executed for collaborating with the Germans. I was surprised that the number was that high, but it is considered accurate: about one quarter were executed during the resistance phase of the occupation, and most of the rest in the early months of liberation when courts were made up of former Resistance fighters and many judicial procedures were provisional. “The best estimate for summary executions, which includes executions following courts martial and other ad hoc jurisdictions, now approaches the ten thousand figure which de Gaulle had published back in 1959.” (p. 274)
Long before D-Day the Gaullist government in exile had given consideration to how to handle people complicit in assisting the Germans and had plans in place to quickly establish special courts to deal with the large numbers of cases that were expected. The purge (épuration in French) began in earnest as soon at the Allies invaded France and the Germans began to withdraw. Initially summary justice was carried out, and those accused were executed on the spot. As the government gained control courts were created to try those rounded up. Courts martial were set up for those accused of military offenses such as joining the German army or its auxiliaries, and civilian courts were established to try cases of profiteering, giving material support to the enemy, and for people who had denounced others in return for a reward or out of Nazi convictions.
In the early days people wanted justice, and they wanted it immediately. Formal courtroom proceedings, with the emphasis on evidence and rule of law, were slow and raised the possibility that citizens would start taking matters into their own hands once more. The government had decided that they would not retroactively apply new legislation to the cases under their review, since there were already pre-war laws that covered giving aid and support to the enemies of France. However, they set this aside in one instance, the creation of the sentence of indignité nationale, which was a loss of civil rights and often termination from employment, loss of pension, and ineligibility for government office. It was hoped that indignité nationale would serve as public shaming for those who had engaged in small scale collaboration, while reassuring the population that the justice system was working and would eventually bring the important collaborators to trial.
Over three hundred thousand cases were submitted to the liberation courts, and large numbers of people were detained, although in some cases it was to protect them from extra-judicial justice. “In all, 126,020 persons were interned by the liberators. Of that number, 36,377 were released as soon as conditions allowed.” (p. 85) Since anyone could denounce anyone else it also included people who had been accused as a form of personal score settling, and there were widely reported stories that some collaborators had recast themselves as members of the Resistance and had tried to hide their actions by denouncing the very people who could provide evidence of their collaboration.
As time went by the furor for justice cooled, and there were calls for national reconciliation. An interesting aspect of this was that those who had been subject to the justice system for their wartime activities were free to write about them, and an entire literature sprung up claiming that there had been widespread torture and and sentences based on flimsy or non-existent evidence. The other side of the story tended not be be told, since those who had taken part in the early meting out of justice were unsure of the legality of their actions and did not want to compromise themselves. As a result the former collaborators were able to dominate the discussion and set the terms of the debate, and much of the population gradually came to believe that the épuration had been at best an overreaction, and at worst a grave miscarriage of justice.
Sentences became lighter and lighter. In many cases judgments were pronounced and then immediately vacated. “One predictable result was that, considering the time that had elapsed since the occupation, Vichy officials were now to receive lighter sentences or even acquittal on charges of the same level of seriousness as those which had carried a death sentence [in 1944-1945]”. (p. 182-183) There was also a considerable amount of cynicism that many of the important or well known collaborators were evading justice. Famous writers, actors, and artists, who had enthusiastically supported the Germans, were able to obtain acquittal because they had, on seeing which way the war was going, offered nominal support to the Resistance.
There were also philosophical objections to the purge. For instance, “if a company president had to be indicted because his factory had produced for the Germans, then his top managers, his engineers, would also have to be indicted – and why not the firemen, and then the workers who had actually painted the swastikas on the tanks? If the answer was that the worker had only been trying to earn a living, then wasn’t this also true for the company president?” (p. 221)
Some of the collaborationist apologetics reached disgraceful levels. Maurice Bardèche, an enthusiastic Fascist writer, made the argument that “Phillipe Pétain was the legitimate chief of state even if he had been in error, so that none of his followers deserved punishment. It was the resistance which was illegal, and the purge only represented vengeance. (In Bardèche’s view, even attacks on Communists and Jews in the collaboration press had been lawful.)” (p. 269)
In the end the number of sentences passed by the various épuration courts after the initial surge of provisional justice was much smaller than the popular imagination believes.
As a final note, although the purges in France get the most mention in histories, “in a comparative study of other West Europeans nations occupied by the Nazis, historian Peter Novick showed that there had been more arrests, more convictions per capita, not only in Belgium and the Netherlands, but in Denmark and Norway.” (p. 275)
I had to search for this book, and finally turned up a copy in an online used bookstore. It was published in 1986 and was the only book I could find that looked at France specifically. In doing some research since then I have found that Robert Paxton has also written extensively on fascism and France during World War II. In 2004 he published The Anatomy of Fascism, which contains this definition, which is unsettlingly apt for today’s political climate.
As the philosopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Addendum:
After reading this book I became curious about how Italy confronted its fascist history, and the answer is that it never did. The reasons are varied, but ultimately craven. Many of the alleged crimes had taken place in the Balkans, which after the war were under communist control, and Communists were never known for respect for the rule of law. They were happy to hang anyone accused, with or without evidence. The Italian government did not want this to happen to its citizens, but even more so they wanted to create the myth of the Good Italian. Although there were documented cases of rape, murder, and torture by Italian troops, all blame for any such crimes was placed on “fascists,” and in particular the Germans, those heartless, soulless, lawless killing machines. Italians soldiers were to be seen as representatives of humanity, of mercy and kindness, who would never harm innocents.
Nor did the Allies press Italy for justice, since it was to be rewarded for its brave struggle in turning against Germany. Italy promised to try the accused locally, but never did so, and thus men every bit as depraved as the worst of the SS went free, and were even honored for their wartime service. To this day Italy has never confronted its past; cities and towns are littered still with fascist monuments, and Italian politics are tainted with the legacy of fascism. For anyone seeking more information, I found two articles by Filippo Focardi which are available on the internet. They are hard to read sometimes, in the sense that they will make you angry, but they provide a good background to this sorry subject.
- The Question of Fascist Italy’s War Crimes.pdf (Journal of Modern Italian Studies – September 2004)
- Italy’s Amnesia over War Guilt.pdf (Mediterranean Quarterly - January 2015)
Long before D-Day the Gaullist government in exile had given consideration to how to handle people complicit in assisting the Germans and had plans in place to quickly establish special courts to deal with the large numbers of cases that were expected. The purge (épuration in French) began in earnest as soon at the Allies invaded France and the Germans began to withdraw. Initially summary justice was carried out, and those accused were executed on the spot. As the government gained control courts were created to try those rounded up. Courts martial were set up for those accused of military offenses such as joining the German army or its auxiliaries, and civilian courts were established to try cases of profiteering, giving material support to the enemy, and for people who had denounced others in return for a reward or out of Nazi convictions.
In the early days people wanted justice, and they wanted it immediately. Formal courtroom proceedings, with the emphasis on evidence and rule of law, were slow and raised the possibility that citizens would start taking matters into their own hands once more. The government had decided that they would not retroactively apply new legislation to the cases under their review, since there were already pre-war laws that covered giving aid and support to the enemies of France. However, they set this aside in one instance, the creation of the sentence of indignité nationale, which was a loss of civil rights and often termination from employment, loss of pension, and ineligibility for government office. It was hoped that indignité nationale would serve as public shaming for those who had engaged in small scale collaboration, while reassuring the population that the justice system was working and would eventually bring the important collaborators to trial.
Over three hundred thousand cases were submitted to the liberation courts, and large numbers of people were detained, although in some cases it was to protect them from extra-judicial justice. “In all, 126,020 persons were interned by the liberators. Of that number, 36,377 were released as soon as conditions allowed.” (p. 85) Since anyone could denounce anyone else it also included people who had been accused as a form of personal score settling, and there were widely reported stories that some collaborators had recast themselves as members of the Resistance and had tried to hide their actions by denouncing the very people who could provide evidence of their collaboration.
As time went by the furor for justice cooled, and there were calls for national reconciliation. An interesting aspect of this was that those who had been subject to the justice system for their wartime activities were free to write about them, and an entire literature sprung up claiming that there had been widespread torture and and sentences based on flimsy or non-existent evidence. The other side of the story tended not be be told, since those who had taken part in the early meting out of justice were unsure of the legality of their actions and did not want to compromise themselves. As a result the former collaborators were able to dominate the discussion and set the terms of the debate, and much of the population gradually came to believe that the épuration had been at best an overreaction, and at worst a grave miscarriage of justice.
Sentences became lighter and lighter. In many cases judgments were pronounced and then immediately vacated. “One predictable result was that, considering the time that had elapsed since the occupation, Vichy officials were now to receive lighter sentences or even acquittal on charges of the same level of seriousness as those which had carried a death sentence [in 1944-1945]”. (p. 182-183) There was also a considerable amount of cynicism that many of the important or well known collaborators were evading justice. Famous writers, actors, and artists, who had enthusiastically supported the Germans, were able to obtain acquittal because they had, on seeing which way the war was going, offered nominal support to the Resistance.
There were also philosophical objections to the purge. For instance, “if a company president had to be indicted because his factory had produced for the Germans, then his top managers, his engineers, would also have to be indicted – and why not the firemen, and then the workers who had actually painted the swastikas on the tanks? If the answer was that the worker had only been trying to earn a living, then wasn’t this also true for the company president?” (p. 221)
Some of the collaborationist apologetics reached disgraceful levels. Maurice Bardèche, an enthusiastic Fascist writer, made the argument that “Phillipe Pétain was the legitimate chief of state even if he had been in error, so that none of his followers deserved punishment. It was the resistance which was illegal, and the purge only represented vengeance. (In Bardèche’s view, even attacks on Communists and Jews in the collaboration press had been lawful.)” (p. 269)
In the end the number of sentences passed by the various épuration courts after the initial surge of provisional justice was much smaller than the popular imagination believes.
Final figures, figures published after the very last of the Courts of Justice had closed, indicate that 124,751 cases where investigated (by courts and Civic Chambers together). Of these 45,017 never went to trial, and 28,484 persons who did face the juries were acquitted. There were 6,763 death sentences, 2,853 of them in the presence of the defendants, 3,910 in absentia; in all, 767 of the death sentences were actually carried out. Penalties of hard labor for life were given to 2,777 defendants, hard labor for limited terms to 10,434 others, while 24,116 were sent to prison, 2,173 to solitary. The Civic Chambers pronounced 48,484 sentences of indignité although 3,184 of them were eventually excused. (p. 164)
As a final note, although the purges in France get the most mention in histories, “in a comparative study of other West Europeans nations occupied by the Nazis, historian Peter Novick showed that there had been more arrests, more convictions per capita, not only in Belgium and the Netherlands, but in Denmark and Norway.” (p. 275)
I had to search for this book, and finally turned up a copy in an online used bookstore. It was published in 1986 and was the only book I could find that looked at France specifically. In doing some research since then I have found that Robert Paxton has also written extensively on fascism and France during World War II. In 2004 he published The Anatomy of Fascism, which contains this definition, which is unsettlingly apt for today’s political climate.
Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
As the philosopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Addendum:
After reading this book I became curious about how Italy confronted its fascist history, and the answer is that it never did. The reasons are varied, but ultimately craven. Many of the alleged crimes had taken place in the Balkans, which after the war were under communist control, and Communists were never known for respect for the rule of law. They were happy to hang anyone accused, with or without evidence. The Italian government did not want this to happen to its citizens, but even more so they wanted to create the myth of the Good Italian. Although there were documented cases of rape, murder, and torture by Italian troops, all blame for any such crimes was placed on “fascists,” and in particular the Germans, those heartless, soulless, lawless killing machines. Italians soldiers were to be seen as representatives of humanity, of mercy and kindness, who would never harm innocents.
Nor did the Allies press Italy for justice, since it was to be rewarded for its brave struggle in turning against Germany. Italy promised to try the accused locally, but never did so, and thus men every bit as depraved as the worst of the SS went free, and were even honored for their wartime service. To this day Italy has never confronted its past; cities and towns are littered still with fascist monuments, and Italian politics are tainted with the legacy of fascism. For anyone seeking more information, I found two articles by Filippo Focardi which are available on the internet. They are hard to read sometimes, in the sense that they will make you angry, but they provide a good background to this sorry subject.
- The Question of Fascist Italy’s War Crimes.pdf (Journal of Modern Italian Studies – September 2004)
- Italy’s Amnesia over War Guilt.pdf (Mediterranean Quarterly - January 2015)
June 7, 2024
The author writes about events in France during and after it's liberation by the Allies in 1944. There was, to use the French term, an “épuration” – a purge or a reckoning of those who had collaborated with the Nazi occupying forces. At the top of the list, of course, were Marshall Petain and Pierre Laval.
This process was started in 1943 when the provisional French government, under Charles de Gaulle, moved to Algiers after the Allied forces liberated North Africa. So, the purge had already started in these French colonies of the collaborators.
De Gaulle’s provisional government (called the Free-French) started to make plans to set-up their own governance when mainland France was to be liberated during the Allied landings. The purpose of this was two-fold:
1) under no circumstances did they want the Allied forces to start their own temporary military government in liberated areas; France was to be administered by France and no one else.
2) They wanted to remove all Vichy administrators and imprison those who collaborated with the occupying Nazi forces.
They made lists of persons to arrest and incarcerate – and possibly execute – depending on the nature of the collaboration.
As became evident during the liberation, there was a crucial time period before the new French administration was set in place. During this crucial period, “justice” was often administered by an angry mob. Years of occupation allowed pent-up resentments to fester and grow. The resistance groups in the area often knew who had made denunciations. They had seen their comrades being arrested, interrogated, and killed.
Even with the setting-up of a provisional government administration with courts – justice had to be quick. The newly liberated rural areas, towns and cities had no patience for lengthy trials. Vichy officials were removed – so the courts, judges and juries were composed of non-collaborators. Resistance fighters often made their presence well-known in the court-rooms. The author provides us with many examples.
For those convicted of lesser crimes there would be a sentence known as “national indignity”, which could mean a number of things: such as being unable to vote, removed from your job, unable to work for the government, to teach, or work in the media. “National indignity” was stuck on you and became a part of your identity – much like having a criminal record.
There were two waves of anger – the first immediately after the liberation (and this took place over several months), and the second when French prisoners of war and forced labourers returned home at the wars’ conclusion in May 1945. These numbered in the millions – and they each had their own tale of betrayal and treachery.
In the late 1940s there began a period of “forgiveness” when many prison terms were shortened and “national indignity” removed. Of course, this caused former resistance fighters to investigate in more detail the extensive collaboration that took place.
This book is an engaging and thorough examination of French history during and after World War II. If de Gaulle had not prepared his government to administer the liberated regions, arbitrary mob violence would have been far worse than it was.
All levels of society are scrutinized – from women who had affairs with German soldiers, the clergy, business managers, the government and the French army who, at times, fought against Free French soldiers and Allied troops. There was a “Militia” (the Milice) that fought against the French resistance – one can only imagine how they were treated. There were French who wore German uniforms and writers like Celine and Robert Brasillach, who were not only pro-Nazi, but viciously anti-Semitic (Brasillach was executed in 1945).
Those in the media who wrote or broadcasted sometimes suffered the worst – because their words could then be used against them.
Page 211 (my book) Jean Paulhan, 1947
“The engineers, contractors, and masons who built the Atlantic fortification [for the Germans] walk among us without fear… They are building walls for new prisons for journalists who made the mistake of writing that the Atlantic fortifications were well made.”
This process was started in 1943 when the provisional French government, under Charles de Gaulle, moved to Algiers after the Allied forces liberated North Africa. So, the purge had already started in these French colonies of the collaborators.
De Gaulle’s provisional government (called the Free-French) started to make plans to set-up their own governance when mainland France was to be liberated during the Allied landings. The purpose of this was two-fold:
1) under no circumstances did they want the Allied forces to start their own temporary military government in liberated areas; France was to be administered by France and no one else.
2) They wanted to remove all Vichy administrators and imprison those who collaborated with the occupying Nazi forces.
They made lists of persons to arrest and incarcerate – and possibly execute – depending on the nature of the collaboration.
As became evident during the liberation, there was a crucial time period before the new French administration was set in place. During this crucial period, “justice” was often administered by an angry mob. Years of occupation allowed pent-up resentments to fester and grow. The resistance groups in the area often knew who had made denunciations. They had seen their comrades being arrested, interrogated, and killed.
Even with the setting-up of a provisional government administration with courts – justice had to be quick. The newly liberated rural areas, towns and cities had no patience for lengthy trials. Vichy officials were removed – so the courts, judges and juries were composed of non-collaborators. Resistance fighters often made their presence well-known in the court-rooms. The author provides us with many examples.
For those convicted of lesser crimes there would be a sentence known as “national indignity”, which could mean a number of things: such as being unable to vote, removed from your job, unable to work for the government, to teach, or work in the media. “National indignity” was stuck on you and became a part of your identity – much like having a criminal record.
There were two waves of anger – the first immediately after the liberation (and this took place over several months), and the second when French prisoners of war and forced labourers returned home at the wars’ conclusion in May 1945. These numbered in the millions – and they each had their own tale of betrayal and treachery.
In the late 1940s there began a period of “forgiveness” when many prison terms were shortened and “national indignity” removed. Of course, this caused former resistance fighters to investigate in more detail the extensive collaboration that took place.
This book is an engaging and thorough examination of French history during and after World War II. If de Gaulle had not prepared his government to administer the liberated regions, arbitrary mob violence would have been far worse than it was.
All levels of society are scrutinized – from women who had affairs with German soldiers, the clergy, business managers, the government and the French army who, at times, fought against Free French soldiers and Allied troops. There was a “Militia” (the Milice) that fought against the French resistance – one can only imagine how they were treated. There were French who wore German uniforms and writers like Celine and Robert Brasillach, who were not only pro-Nazi, but viciously anti-Semitic (Brasillach was executed in 1945).
Those in the media who wrote or broadcasted sometimes suffered the worst – because their words could then be used against them.
Page 211 (my book) Jean Paulhan, 1947
“The engineers, contractors, and masons who built the Atlantic fortification [for the Germans] walk among us without fear… They are building walls for new prisons for journalists who made the mistake of writing that the Atlantic fortifications were well made.”
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