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The Collaborator's Penance: The Local Purge, 1944–51

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

Megan Koreman
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Extract

Despite the neat treaties of diplomats and precise agreements of generals, wars like the Second World War end untidily. Amidst the ruins of cities and the wash of refugees, the cessation of international hostilities gives way to the settling of domestic accounts, which in 1944–5 was called the purge of collaborators. As common and as compelling as the purge was, historians have paid relatively little attention to it. The French purge, for instance, remains somewhat of an historical enigma, in part because of the archival laws that shield the judicial records, but also in part because of the apparently obvious nature of the purge. Who cannot sympathise, even if reluctantly, with the bereaved survivors who took vengeance on the collaborator who murdered their husbands or wives, fathers, daughters or beloved friends? But such easy sympathy has misled scholarly analysis into dividing the French purge into a legal purge of court action and a popular purge of vigilante violence.

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Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , July 1997 , pp. 177 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

2 For overviews of the purge as a whole see Rousso, Henry, ‘L'Epuration en France: une histoire inachevée’, Vingtième siècle, Vol. 23 (1992), 78–105Google Scholar; Rioux, Jean-Pierre, The Fourth Republic, 1944–1958, trans. Rogers, Godfrey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 29–42Google Scholar; and Baudot, Marcel, ‘La répression de la collaboration et l'épuration politique, administrative et économique’, La Libération de la France (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1976), 759–804.Google Scholar Herbert Lottman includes the provinces, although from the Parisian perspective, in his discussion of the legal and extra-legal purge in The People's Anger: Justice and Revenge in Post-Liberation France (London: Hutchinson, 1986). Novick, Peter, The Resistance versus Vichy: The Purge of Collaborators in Liberated France (London: Columbia University Press, 1968)Google Scholar, will probably remain the definitive work on the legal purge until the justice records are opened. Brossat's, Alain fascinating Les Tondues: un carnaval moche (Levallois-Perret: Manya, 1992)Google Scholar, and idem, Libération, fête folle: 6 juin '44–8 mai '45: mythes et rites ou le grand théâtre des passions populaires, Série Mémoires no. 30 (Paris: Autrement, 1994), offer cultural analyses of the popular purge.

3 The 1946 census registered the populations of Moûtiers (chef-lieu-du-canton) as 4,798, of Rambervillers (chef-lieu-du-canton) as 6,488 and of Saint-Flour (chef-lieu-d'arrondissement) as 7,179, but, if anything, the smallest town, Moûtiers, played the most important regional role as the capital of a fairly inaccessible Alpine valley.

4 For the Gaullist myth and its political life see Rousso, , Vichy Syndrome, 15–18Google Scholar and passim.

5 The best estimate for the number of summary executions remains de Gaulle's claim that about 10,000 French men and women were killed as collaborators both before and after 4 June 1944. Gaulle, Charles de, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, trans. Griffin, Jonathan and Howard, Richard (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955–1960), 710–11.Google Scholar For figures on the summary executions see Rousso, , ‘L'Epuration’, Henri Amouroux, La Grande histoire des Français après l'occupation, Vol. 9, Les règlements de comptes (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1991), 63–99Google Scholar, and Baudot, Marcel, ‘L'Epuration: bilan chiffré’, Bulletin de l'IHTP, Vol. 25 (1986), 37–53.Google Scholar

6 Tarrago, Llibert, ‘Les reclus de Saint-Flour’, Le Monde, 22 Oct. 1983Google Scholar; Favereau, Eric, ‘Les séquestrés de Saint-Flour: trente ans de solitude’, Libération, 22, 23 Oct. 1983Google Scholar, Brossat, , Les Tondues, 149–55Google Scholar, and Martrès, Eugène, Le Cantal de 1939 à 1945 (Cournon d'Auvergne: Editions de Borée, 1993), 643.Google Scholar Marguerite Duras has explored the emotional trauma of a woman whose family imprisoned her after her head was shaved in the screenplay of Hiroshima, Mon Amour, trans. Richard Seaver (New York: Grove, 1961)

7 Prefect to Commissioner of the Republic at Clermont-Ferrand, 9 Nov. 1944, Archives départementales du Cantal, Aurillac (hereafter AC), 1 W 359.

8 La Margeride, 11 Nov. 1944.

9 Archives nationales, Paris (hereafter AN), FIC III 1211, 15 March 15–15 April 1945.

10 Le Cantal ouvrier et paysan, 7 April 1945.

11 Le Cantal ouvrier et paysan, 14 April 1945. In this, the Sanflorain communists echoed the dedication of the French Communist Party (PCF) to legality at this time. For the position and strategy of the PCF in 1944–5, see Rioux, , Fourth Republic, 54–6Google Scholar, and for the PCF and the purge, see Lottman, , People's Anger, 94–6Google Scholar and passim.

12 The magistrate's court in Saint-Flour sentenced two men to a 1,500 franc fine for calling their neighbour a Milicien and for the bloody fist fight the three of them got into over the matter. The case reminds us of how much of the popular purge must have occurred at the unrecorded level of relations between neighbours. La Margeride, 10 Feb. 1945.

13 Mme Auger née Gamier, , ‘La Libération, août-octobre 1944’, MS 1 Dec. 1944Google Scholar; Jean Vartier, ‘Rambervillers: son occupation-sa libération’, typescript, 1945, and ‘Mario Faivre: Notes à propos de l'année 1944’, typescript, n.d. I would like to thank M. Jean-Claude Kempf of Rambervillers for providing these documents. A copy of Vartier's typescript can also be found in AN 72 AJ 206, CH2GM, Vosges. Less reliable rumours to the effect that women were held in the town hall before having their hair cut, and accusations that certain women bribed their way out of the mairie with their coiffures intact can be found in Le Réveil des Vosges, 14 Dec. 1944, and Le Travailleur vosgien, 15 April 1945.

14 Le Travailleur vosgien, 13 May 1945. Being close to the capital of a département that suffered the shortages of a battle zone, Rambervillers did not have its own newspaper, but it did have its own column in the département papers.

15 AN Fia 4024, Rapports et correspondance du Commissaire régional de la République à Nancy I, 15–30 March 1945.

16 I explore the disruption of the Return in greater detail in ‘A Hero's Homecoming: The Return of the Political Deportees to France, 1945’, Journal of Contemporary History, 32 (1997), 9–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 La Liberté de l'Est, 13 June 1945. AN Fia 4024, 15–31 May 1945, 1–15 June 1945 and 1–15 July 1945. See also AN 72 AJ 384, 15 May-15 June 1945, and La Liberté de l'Est, 3–4 June 1945 and 5 June 1945.

18 Le Travailleur vosgien, 10 June 1945.

19 La Liberté de l'Est, 31 Aug. 1945 and 1 Sept. 1945; La Croix de Lorraine, 9 Sept. 1945; Le Réveil des Vosges, 23 Sept. 1945; AN Fia 4025, Rapports et correspondance du Commissaire régional de la République à Nancy II, 1–15 Sept. 1945, and Amouroux, , La Grande histoire, 78.Google Scholar As an illustration of the political tangles in which the purge could easily become enmeshed, the rumours surrounding this event included an accusation that the Comité des Forges of Nancy had ordered the murders in order to create a favourable climate for their own candidates in the October general election. La Croix de Lorraine, 9 Sept. 1945, citing (unfavourably) the national edition of L'Humanité.

20 According to a public report published by the purge commission itself in La Résistance savoyarde, 23 Nov. 1945. La Résistance savoyarde, 15 April 1945, praised the chief investigator of the purge commission for maintaining calm in the town.

21 This happened during a period when the town bakeries had to close occasionally for lack of flour. Archives départementales de la Savoie, Chambéry (hereafter AS), 346 R 7, Affaires diverses, 1941–5.

22 AN Fic III 1226, 16 May 1945 and 16 June 1945; La Résistance savoyarde, 19 May 1945 and 2 June 1945, and La Vie nouvelle, 3 June 1945.

23 The prefect of Savoie reported a total of 110 attacks against property, and a minimum of 14 assassinations and 3 attempted assassinations in the department between 22 Oct. 1944 and 15 Sept. 1945, AS 346 R 7. Using unpublished data from the Archives d'Institut d'histoire du temps present, Rousso, ‘L'Epuration’, 83, reports that there were 252 summary executions in Savoie, 185 before and 67 after Liberation.

24 AN Fic III 1226, 16 Aug. 1945. Resistance leaders had publicly denounced vigilantism before, but it was not until Aug. 1945 that the prefect felt that the vigilantes had been pushed to the fringes of the departmental resistance.

25 De Gaulle commuted the Milicien's sentence from death to forced labour for life. AN F1c III 1226, 15 Nov.–15 Dec. 1945.

26 AN F2 4395, Rapports généraux sur le département, Savoie, 1946.

27 In Chambéry bombs exploded at the prefecture, the archbishop's palace, the commissariat de securité publique and the home of the president of the appelate court. AN F1c III 1226, 15 Nov.–15 Dec. 1945, AN F2 4395; La Résistance savoyarde, 8, 22 Dec. 1945, 12, 19, 26 Jan. 1946. La Résistance savoyarde, 26 Jan. 1946, was not mollified by the second trial because it considered the Milicien's crimes in Savoie to have been sufficient to merit the death penalty.

28 Emphasis mine. La Résistance savoyarde, 19 Jan. 1946.

29 ibid., 2, 9, 23 Feb. 1946.

30 ibid., 19 Jan. 1946.

31 ibid., 2 March 1946.

32 For an analysis of the development of public opinion regarding the purge by the prefect of Drôme see AN F1a 4028, Bulletin sur la situation dans les régions et départements, 23 Dec. 1944.

33 Secret purge commissions and tribunaux revolutionaux were also reported in Pont-à-Mousson (Meurthe-&-Moselle) and in Dordogne, AN F1a 4025, 1–15 Aug. and AN F1a 4028, 11 April 1945, prefect of Dordogne.

34 Le Travailleur vosgien, 21 Dec. 1945.

35 La Résistance des Vosges, 12 April 1945.

36 For a history and refutation of the Black Legend that claims that hundreds of thousands were slaughtered in the popular purge, see Rousso, , ‘L'Epuration’, 81–5Google Scholar, and idem, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).

37 The legal and local purges had not had time to develop their antagonisms by October 1944, so it is not surprising that a prefect, himself a resistant, would sound as if he expected swift and harsh justice from the legal purge. La Savoie française, 5 Oct. 1944.

38 For these visions see Andrieu, Claire, Le programme commun de la Résistance (Paris: Editions de l'Erudit, 1984)Google Scholar, and Shennan, Andrew, Rethinking France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

39 See Lotmann, , People's Anger, 134–5, 164–5Google Scholar and passim, for the problems with the concept of ‘national unworthiness’.

40 Emphasis mine. Le Réveil des Vosges, 22 April 1945.

41 Le Travailleur vosgien, 13 May 1945. The correspondent named five tradespeople, at least two of whom had been targets of the March bombings in town.

42 For the powers and attitudes of these virtual viceroys see Foulon, Charles-Louis, Le pouvoir en province à la Libération (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1975).Google Scholar

43 For the maquis as justiciers see Kedward, H. R., In Search of the Maquis: Rural Resistance in Southern France, 1942–1944 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).Google Scholar

44 AC 1W 359, report from the Inspecteur de Police judiciaire of 25 April 1945.

45 Unfortunately, there is not enough room here to engage in the debate over the head-shavings, other than to remark that the various analyses share an erroneous understanding of their chronology. The traditional interpretation explains the head-shavings as a safety valve through which the women's hair saved the lives of male collaborators who might otherwise have been murdered, Lottman, , People's Anger, 68;Google Scholar feminists analyse the head-shavings as the reassertion of male authority at the war's end, Corran Laurens, ‘“Le Femme au Turban”: les Femmes tondues’, in Kedward, H. R. and Wood, Nancy (eds), The Liberation of France: Image and Event (Oxford: Berg, 1995) 155–79.Google Scholar The philosopher Alain Brossat, Les Tondues, passim, gives a compelling (though unfortunately chronologically limited) description of the head-shavings as a popular carnival in which the People expressed a deep, Bahktinian laughter while ritually burying the war.

46 For an extreme example see Lewis, Norman, Naples' 44 (New York: Pantheon, 1978).Google Scholar

47 La Liberté de l'Est, 30 Sept.–1 Oct. 1945.

48 La Croix de Lorraine, 21 Oct. 1945; La Résistance des Vosges, Dec. 1945; Le Réveil des Vosges, 16 Dec. 1945; Le Travailleur vosgien, 24 June 1945.

49 La Savoie française, 7 Oct. 1944.

50 Novick, , Resistance versus Vichy, 209–14.Google Scholar

51 Rousso, Vichy Syndrome, discusses the political and cultural ramifications of this ‘repression’ of the memory of collaboration.