Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust. Michael J. Bazyler

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СКАЧАТЬ of the occupiers was seconded by the French, by the French state,”² he said.

      President Chirac’s statement referred not only the ignoble role France played in the Holocaust, but also the larger shame that a large portion of the French population collaborated with the German occupiers.³ And this collaboration included much of the French political class. One of those was a major political figure in prewar France: Pierre Laval.

      Laval was born in 1883 in Châteldon, a small town in the central Auvergne region of France.⁴ His early political affiliations were socialist but, as he commented at the end of his life, he was not a doctrinal socialist but more a socialist of the heart. Laval was first elected to the French National Assembly at age thirty and simultaneously elected as mayor of Aubervilliers, a working-class suburb of Paris. He held this latter position for over twenty years until he was removed from it in 1944 by the provisional French government of Charles de Gaulle. In addition to success as a politician, Laval was a successful lawyer, representing mainly workers and frequently attaining favorable results. Trials would mark both the beginning and the end of his professional life.

      Laval’s political career witnessed more electoral wins than losses and, as he moved upward in the French governmental structure, he also drifted to the right. In the 1920s, he occupied subcabinet and cabinet positions in various center-right governments, leading to his selection twice as prime minister of France in the 1930s: from January 1931 to February 1932, and then again from June 1935 to February 1936.

      As a government minister, Laval had to deal with many of the issues that arose in the last ten years of the French Third Republic. It appears that Laval’s views on Germany and on international relations in general were formulated during this period. These came to shape his conduct as a leading figure in the Vichy regime, which followed the military defeat and collapse of France in 1940, the armistice with Nazi Germany, and the end of the Third Republic.

      In his prewar tenures as prime minister, Laval’s principal concern with Germany–pre-Hitler Germany–dealt with reparations owed by the Weimar Republic to France, France’s debt to the United States, and the burden the international economic crisis imposed on these financial obligations. Laval’s efforts in this area resulted in a 1931 trip to the United States, when he met President Herbert Hoover and other leading American political figures. All seemed to have been impressed with his practicality and intelligence.⁵ The seven months of Laval’s tenure as Vichy France’s prime minister, four years later, were in an entirely different world—rendering the financial issues he dealt with in 1931 almost inconsequential, if not even quaint.

      Hitler had written in 1925 in Mein Kampf that France and Germany were intractable enemies. Once he became Germany’s chancellor in 1933, his public message changed. In a 1934 speech to the Reichstag, Hitler announced that there was no reason for France and Germany to remain foes. To demonstrate the absence of tensions between Germany and France, Hitler renounced any claim to Alsace and Lorraine and stated that the only issue between the two countries was the status of the Saar, where a plebiscite was to be held to determine whether it would be French or German territory. That plebiscite, held in 1935, resulted in the Saar reverting to Germany, a result that France and the rest of Europe accepted. Unfortunately, Hitler’s statements in Mein Kampf presented a far more accurate depiction of his objectives than those in the conciliatory speech before the Reichstag.

      Laval’s approach to Germany also envisaged cooperation between the two continental powers. His underlying philosophy was that France and Germany, as powerful neighbors, would clash on the battlefield every twenty years unless they reached some long-term accommodation. To keep its belligerent neighbor at bay, Laval sought to isolate Germany from other European powers. Clearly, an alliance between Hitler and the United Kingdom was not realistic. Thus Laval tried to work out an alliance between France and Italy. The latter was an especial focus of his foreign policy, an objective complicated both by Italy’s colonial ambitions in North Africa, which conflicted with French interests there, and Italy’s expansive policies in Abyssinia (Ethiopia), which generally came in conflict with the position of Western liberal democracies. Nevertheless, Laval felt that a union of France and Italy, coupled perhaps with Nationalist Spain, would preclude Germany from implementing any aggressive objectives. Laval saw himself as a friend to Italy and was convinced that he had an almost unique ability to resolve issues with it, an ability that had to lie dormant during the critical years between his tenure as prime minister, which ended in 1936, and the beginning of the Second World War. There was a certain delusional quality to Laval’s conception of himself as a unique facilitator of Italian issues.⁶ With or without Laval, during this period Italy drifted inexorably into a military alliance with Germany.

      The last part of the 1930s saw increased belligerence and expansionism on the part of Germany. The notion that all Germany wanted was to regain the Saar was quickly shown to be nonsense. In addition to defaulting on its post–First World War reparations obligations, Germany also remilitarized the Rhineland in direct defiance of the Versailles Treaty. This was followed by (1) the annexation of Austria in the spring of 1938, (2) the annexation of the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia in the fall of 1938, and (3) the annexation of all of Bohemia and Moravia in the spring of 1939. All of these military takeovers went unchecked. Following its August 1939 nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, Germany invaded Poland the following month. France and the United Kingdom now declared war on Germany and the Second World War began.

      Germany’s Western front remained quiet for several months as its military efforts, with the assistance of the Soviet Union, were directed to the obliteration of Poland. On May 10, 1940, Germany launched its invasion to the west, attacking first the Low Countries (Belgium and the Netherlands) and then France through the Ardennes, bypassing the purportedly impenetrable barrier of the Maginot Line. Five days later, German tank divisions broke through at Sedan and, in that short time, France’s military situation completely deteriorated.

      The panicked French government, headed by Prime Minister Paul Reynaud, began making cabinet changes and brought on First World War hero Marshal Philippe Pétain as a deputy prime minister. The French military was placed under the leadership of General Maxime Weygand, also a First World War veteran who had seen success in battle. These changes were useless; the German offensive continued and German troops broke through the French lines in early June.

      At this point, the Reynaud government had a choice: it could try to reach an agreement with the Germans or flee and carry out resistance from abroad.⁷ Laval urged the government to stay, claiming it would be treason to abandon France to a German Gauleiter (regional Nazi Party leader). President Albert Lebrun, on the other hand, strongly urged a government-in-exile. Laval’s view prevailed.⁸ A few days later, Reynaud resigned and Pétain was asked to form a new government. Pétain offered Laval the Justice Ministry portfolio but Laval declined, since he wanted to be foreign minister. This meant that Laval was not part of the new government, which was immediately tasked with ending hostilities before France was completely crushed militarily.⁹

      France received Germany’s armistice terms on June 21. If France agreed to the terms, Germany would occupy two-thirds of the country, including the entire Atlantic and English Channel coasts, and France would bear the cost of the occupation. The French military would be reduced to a police force of one hundred thousand, and its weapons and equipment would be made available to Germany. The French naval fleet would be disarmed, except as necessary to protect the colonies, but would remain under French control. Germany would not use the fleet for its military objectives. The French colonial empire would be left intact, and a new and emasculated French government would administer both the occupied and unoccupied zones of France. France would also be obliged to hand over Germans living in France to the Germans; these were essentially German Jews and political opponents who had fled Hitler’s Germany for what they had thought was the safe haven of the French Republic.

      France signed the armistice agreement on June 22.¹⁰ The following day, Laval was appointed minister of state and several days later, СКАЧАТЬ