Verdict on Vichy

Power and Prejudice in the Vichy France Regim

By: Michael Curtis

Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin

This masterful audiobook is the first comprehensive reappraisal of the Vichy France regime for over 20 years. France was occupied by Nazi Germany between 1940 and 1944, and the exact nature of France's role in the Vichy years is only now beginning to come to light. One of the main reasons that the Vichy history is difficult to tell is that some of France's most prominent politicians, including President Mitterand, have been implicated in the regime. This has meant that public access to key documents has been denied and it is only now that an objective analysis is possible.

The fate of France as an occupied country could easily have been shared by Britain, and it is this background element, which enhances our fascination with Vichy France. How would we have acted under similar circumstances? The divisions and repercussions of the Vichy years still resonate in France today, and whether you view the regime as a fascist dictatorship, an authoritarian offshoot of the Third Reich or an embodiment of heightened French nationalism, Curtis's rounded, incisive book will be seen as the standard work on its subject for many years.

©2003, 2014 Michael Curtis (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Vichy’s Crimes

Excellent in-depth story of how Vichy France aided in the Nazi holocaust and caused the deaths of thousands and the loss of Jewish property under French laws. Excellent history with a cautionary tale of how civilized learned people acted barbarically.

Performance Ruined It

What did you like best about Verdict on Vichy? What did you like least?

The reader made it unbearable to listen.

Would you be willing to try another book from Michael Curtis? Why or why not?

Yes.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Awful. Simply awful. Made it impossible to finish.

Was Verdict on Vichy worth the listening time?

No.

Unknown History

I knew the basic facts but was surprised by how much I did not know about Vichy. I gave it 3 stars, by which I nean it was good, solid, interesting history. órgãos in the text the French quotations have transladado footnotes, but it took away from my pleasure to miss the "key point" when it came from the França witnesses.

Very Informative

This book gives much detail and nuance to the generalization of Vichy France.

The reader was generally very good, but his strenuous, but very poor pronunciation of French was a serious distraction. It is better to pronounce foreign words as an American than to try to sound French.

Great update on current scholarship, however...

I gave up on this audiobook partway into the third chapter, and ordered a copy of the book, which I find fascinating. The problem is the narrator, whose inability to pronounce French comprehensibly is a serious handicap given the subject matter. I'm bilingual, and moderately familiar with the period, so usually had a fair idea of the names being mangled, but it simply became too painful to continue. Poor pronunciation of the occasional French word in an English-language novel or work of non-fiction is annoying but bearable. In this case, where the majority of relevant names and places will of necessity be in French, the narrator must be able to make him/herself understood, and preferably not drive listeners crazy while doing so. Based on the other comments I've read, I'm far from alone in my frustration.

My thoughts

I have always been interested in WWII historical facts. I wanted to know more about the Vichy regime and this audio book said it all.

Thorough, detailed, and nuanced study

This is the sort of work best described as magisterial. Clearly the result of years of research, it’s long, highly detailed, scholarly, and written with enormous sensitivity and intelligence. And it also, needless to say, makes for a very grim, depressing reading experience (or listening experience), one that will frequently horrify and enrage.

Note that you’ll find lots of dates, statistics, the details of racial laws, the names of organizations (Jewish and non-Jewish) and political parties, a careful chronicle of France’s long tradition of antisemitism, and nuanced discussions of moral responsibilities. You’ll find mini-biographies of the people in charge, from Marshal Petain and Pierre Laval on down. But don’t expect something lively and colorful, a narrative history filled with anecdotes, because it’s not that sort of book.

The author's “verdict” is that Vichy was, for the most part, overwhelmingly guilty. Just as in the portion of France occupied by the Nazis, tens of thousands of Jews – men, women, children, the elderly, healthy and sick, influential and poor, even some decorated or wounded veterans of the previous war — were rounded up, registered, and sent to German extermination camps. According to the author, 11,000 Jewish children were deported by Vichy authorities – often suffering brutal ill treatment after having been cruelly separated from their families – and only a few hundred survived. And the book makes clear that despite denials, almost everyone in authority knew or suspected that deportees of all ages were being sent to their deaths.

The book also makes clear that in doing so, the Vichy government was not merely following orders or yielding to German pressure; the regime, though self-governing, was an eager collaborator with France’s Nazi conquerors and was sometimes even more zealous than they were. Each wartime nation was different, of course, but the book compares the treatment of Jews in French-run Vichy with that in Nazi-occupied Denmark (where most Jews managed to survive or escape), Nazi-sympathizing Bulgaria (which saved some Jews, especially as the tide of war shifted), and fascist Italy (which was surprisingly protective of Italian Jews, some of the time, and on occasion actually defied German demands for Jews’ deportation). The Vichy regime, acting on its own, was harsher and more fanatical than each of these – though not as harsh as Holland, in terms of percentages of Jews killed or surviving.

Every phase of French society, every field and profession, actively participated, collaborated, or at least – in a word the book uses — accommodated itself to the Nazis. Jews were expelled from the law, from academia, from medicine, from the press, from the arts. The French police were especially zealous in hunting down Jews. Attitudes varied among individuals: Some Vichy officials were not personally antisemitic but motivated more by personal ambition, extreme French nationalism, or fascist ideology; others were so extreme that they’d rather send Jewish children to their deaths than allow even those with the necessary papers to escape overseas.

The record is complicated, though, and actually somewhat nuanced, in that — as distinct from Nazi-occupied France — the most severe treatment in Vichy was generally aimed at foreign-born Jews, at least in principle, at least most of the time. French-born Jews, while separated by a series of laws from normal society, were not necessarily supposed to be eliminated, though in fact thousands were. Naturalized Jews found themselves somewhere in the middle, and various laws, at different stages in the regime, apparently designated different years as to when a Jew would be categorized as French or foreign.

I’m left with the impression that virtually everyone in wartime France, whether in the occupied zone or in Vichy, was to some extent morally compromised – although as the book reminds us, U.S. government officials, especially those in the State Department, bear considerable blame as well for blocking desperate Jews from immigrating.

The last few chapters interested me less. One is on the deceitful opportunist Francois Mitterrand, one on the morally compromised Vatican, others on the — for the most part — disgracefully feeble punishments meted out. Again and again, Nazi collaborators with blood on their hands, and who sometimes had actually been sentenced to death, were pardoned, amnestied, or served only a small portion of their sentences. It’s a dispiriting view of mankind, as if we needed another one right now.

Wow!

I never realized how bad the Vichy government was during the war. I never realized that the Germans never made the French deport Jews. It was the Vichy government. Great book.

Shameful Past, Ominous Future?

Reading the history of Vichy France, one is struck by many parallels with 21st century America. Again we see an unsettling division of society into those who thirst for authority in the person of a strong man and those who yearn for a just and humanitarian community. Again ancient prejudices against foreigners and Jews litter political discourse on the Right. And again there are formerly decent public figures who are ready to throw away the nation’s heritage for a nonexistent glorious past. In this way, the current MAGA infatuation with “virile” world leaders like Putin echoes the Vichyite view of the Fascist dictators. In this view, persecution of foreigners, nonwhites, and Jews signifies strength, and the desired absence of pity or compassion. There is little that separates the treatment of Jews in Vichy France from the egregious policies of the trump administration towards immigrants on our Southern borders. It is a fact that many French men and women refused to go along with Vichy laws against human rights. Some fought the Petain regime from its beginnings following the Armistice of June 1940. But many other prominent French just went along—either from fear of the German occupiers or a misguided sense of national renewal via collaboration. Later came regret for some, historical revision for others. There were trials, some executions, prison time. But many Vichyites escaped justice by fleeing France or by the benevolence of powerful postwar political allies. The MAGA crowd is, it is hoped, not taking notes.

Good book, marginal reading

Excellent, densely researched, and eye-opening book. I, for one, will never see France in quite the same way again. They never underwent the violent catharsis of other Axis nations and, instead, seem to be reaching a resolution incrementally. I hope they get there; they've got a lot to resolve.

The narrator is dreadfully slow and non-fluent. His over-pronounced French names come after portentous pauses and sound like parody. It's a genuinely awful reading, which makes the fact-intensive writing that much more difficult to assimilate while cleaning up the kitchen or doing side lunges. Oh, and he pronounces "banal" to rhyme with "anal." Vraiment le coup de grâce.