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"Résistancialisme" (French;lit. 'Resistance-ism') is aneologism coined by historianHenry Rousso to describe exaggeratedhistorical memory of theFrench Resistance duringWorld War II.[1][2] In particular,résistancialisme refers to exaggerated beliefs about the size and importance of the resistance andanti-German sentiment inGerman-occupied France in post-war French thinking.[1] The term was coined by Rousso in 1987.[2][3] He argued thatrésistancialisme rose amongGaullists andCommunists soon after the war and became mainstream during theAlgerian War. In particular, it was used to describe the belief that resistance was both unanimous and natural during the period, and justify the lack ofhistoriographical interest in the role ofFrench collaboration and theVichy government.[2][non-primary source needed]
Rousso emphasises thatrésistancialisme should not be confused with "résistantialisme" (with a "t", literally "Resistor-ism"), which is a pejorative term used byJean-Marie Desgrange to criticize individuals who retrospectively exaggerated or faked their own involvement in the wartime resistance in an attempt to enhance their own status after the war, for instanceFrançois Mitterrand.[4] The concept ofrésistancialisme has gained some spread through artistic works in France, including movies, novels, television and music; in turn, popular culture has become affected byrésistancialisme.[5][6]
The challenge for theFrench government in theaftermath of World War II was enormous. Theend of German occupation immediately created an atmosphere of confidence and hope in the future[6] and La Resistance became associated to this renewal. However, this positive and unitary attitude did not last.[6] Soon, French people called for tougher measures against women and men suspected of collaboration. In addition to the legal purge (French:épuration légale) conducted by the French government from 1944 to 1949, France underwent a wave of public executions and humiliations known as the wild purge (French:épuration sauvage).[7] These purges included the execution of at least 9000 people, and thehead shaving of women who had had relationships with the German enemy.[8]
In this period of complete disorder and confusion, different voices from the resistance emerged; the two main voices being theGaullist and theCommunist.[9] Hence the need for France to come up with a dominant unifying narrative that would later be referred to as theresistancialist myth, or simplyresistancialism. This narrative presented the Vichy Regime as a parenthesis in French history which did not question "the righteousness of the French nation".[1]
The myth is often embodied byde Gaulle'sLiberation of Paris speech, delivered at theParis City Hall on the 25th of August 1944.
"Paris! Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated! Liberated by itself, liberated by its people with the help of the French armies, with the support and the help of all France, of the France that fights, of the only France, of the real France, of the eternal France!"[10]
At a time when the French nation had never been so fragmented,[11] the resistancialist myth was introduced soon after the war, in 1947, in order to counter the emerging tensions of theCold War and face thecommunist memorial discourse. The collectively built memory had the purpose of, in the words of French historianPierre Laborie, "give a reassuring vision of the dark years" in minimizing the influence of Vichy in the French society and portraying the Résistance as having much more support that it actually had.[12]
All discourse not in accordance with the official memory was to be carefully monitored.Censorship intervened in numerous cases where the Occupation was depicted too dramatically. For instance, movies such asLes Honneurs de la Guerre (1962) had to be modified several times in order to be released, because the role of theMilice was deemed too important. Another example is the removal of a scene which portrayed a French policeman participating in the arrest of Jews inAlain Resnais's movieNight and Fog (1956).[13] The censors went not only to the point of amending fictions, they actually stood to hide actual facts and depictions of reality.
When de Gaullereturned to power in 1958, he participated actively to the creation of the resistancialist myth. The memory of Résistance wassacralized and elevated as the cement of the French nation. Landmark events such as the transfer of theJean Moulin's remains to thePanthéon are representative of such efforts. The message the government aimed to transmit was asyllogism, present in the famous discourse ofMinister of CultureAndré Malraux at this event: if the Resistance is embodied by de Gaulle, and that de Gaulle represents France, then logically Resistance equals France.[14]
This national narrative had also progressively come to shapepopular culture.[5]Cinema had been considered a useful tool both to create the myth in the aftermath of the war and to question it after 1968.[15]The Battle of the Rails (La Bataille du rail) is 1946 a war movie byRené Clément illustrating the French Resistance among railway workers which consisted insabotaging theGerman rail network. This movie is one of the most famous French Résistance movie and greatly contributed to Resistancialism. A few years later,René Clément directed the historical filmIs Paris Burning (1966) based on a book byLarry Collins andDominique Lapierre. This movie depicts the liberation of Paris staged by the French Resistance and theFree French forces.
Not only did the aftermath of World War IIFrench cinema silence the existence of collaboration to favor the myth of Resistancialism but it also buried the memory of foreign forms of resistance such as theManouchian group.[15]
The Communists were the quickest to present themselves as the inheritors of the Liberation. Dubbing themselves the "party of the 75,000 martyrs", whereas about 35,000 French in total, and not all communists, were executed.[16] The communists "probably lost only a few thousand men to German firing squads",[17] but the figure of 75 000 became an accepted truth and contributed to the legacy of the resistance remaining central to the Party's identity.[18] Right after the Liberation, several ceremonies were held honoring fallen communists and eighteen squares and streets inParis were almost immediately renamed after communist martyrs.[19]
The Gaullist party was also keen to take ownership of the legacy of the resistance. The official discourse was that, apart from a few traitors, France had supported the French Résistance and France had liberated itself alone. The central power invested time and energy to make the occupation look like a darkparenthesis, insisting on the idea that the Vichy regime did not represent France. Among these efforts were for example theOrdinance of 9 August 1944, which rendered all thelegislation enacted since 16 June 1940null and void, the renaming of the avenueMaréchal Pétain in avenue DrLouis Mallet who had been a French Résistant,[16] or the refusal to proclaim the restoration of the Republic on August 24 at theHôtel de Ville as it implied that it had for a moment ceased to exist. The goal was to separate the image of France from the one of Vichy. Traces of the construction of that myth can be found in thede Gaulle's speeches during the Liberation and at the end of the war. For instance, during his first speech on a liberated French territory on 14 June 1944, de Gaulle assured the inhabitants ofBayeux to "continue the struggle today, as you have not ceased to do since June 1940".[20] When he returned to power as a result of the political crisis of 1958, de Gaulle reinforced the mythology of the Resistance, notably though the pantheonization ceremony ofJean Moulin.[21]
While both factions shared differences with each other, there was consensus between both on that "the Resistance had represented the real France and incarnated the true feelings of the French people throughout the Occupation".[21] This helped foster and spread the myth of a highly-resistant France during theOccupation period.
The myth of the resistance became so overpowering that for a long period of time, it squeezed out alternative memories of the Occupation period. Many resistants were for instance critical of the idea that a majority of the French population had taken part in the Resistance.[22] The resistance fighterAlban Vistel expressed this frustration, stating that "it is time to unmask a pious myth which has not really deceived anyone. The great majority of the people of this country played only a small and fleeting part in the events. Their activity was passive, except at the last moments".[23]
While traditional conservatism and thefar-right in France had been discredited due to its role in the Vichy government, many rehabilitated former collaborators challenged the prevailing Resistance narrative. Rather than attacking the Resistance as a whole, they created the term "resistentialism"[24] to criticise those who they saw as pseudo-resisters while also attempting to rehabilitate the memory ofPétain and his collaborationist government.[24]
With the myth of the resistance requiring heroes, the memories of victims of theNazi regime not involved in the resistance were often buried within thecollective memory. This is visible in the way different groups ofdeportees were recognised as victims by the Government.[25] While political and resistant deportees were recognised as victims of the Vichy and Nazi regime,Service du travail obligatoire (STO) workers, French workers who had been sent to Germany to work as forced labour, were not. During the post-war period, there was an enduring suspicion that these men could have avoided the STO and joined the Resistance instead.[25]
Shortly after theGénéral de Gaulle's death in November 1970, a new approach to the History ofWorld War II which was less anxious to write a "récit national" (national narrative) started to emerge.
Georges Pompidou who had not been part of therésistance, succeeded de Gaulle to theFrench Presidency in 1969. In a desire to formally end "this time when French people did not love each other",[26] he abandoned the resistancialist tradition. Concomitantly, a new generation affirmed itself after theMay 1968 events in France, greatly liberalizing French society.
In 1971,The Sorrow and the Pity byMarcel Ophüls definitively brought to an end the patriotic myth of mass resistance by depicting a country which wallowed in thecollaboration.[citation needed]Time (magazine) wrote that the film punctured "the bourgeois myth—or protectively askew memory—that allows France generally to act as if hardly any Frenchmen collaborated with the Germans".[27] This was followed in 1972 by the publication ofVichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 byRobert Paxton, which directly challenged the traditional view pioneered byRobert Aron'sHistoire de Vichy (1954). Paxton argued that the Vichy government was in fact eager to collaborate withNazi Germany and did not practice "passive resistance" to German rule.[28] The book was translated intoFrench in 1973 and was welcomed by both communists and the Jewish community, while receiving mixed reactions among resistance groups because of the claim that there was no real resistance until 1941.[28]
In the 1970s, the emergence of a memory aroundanti-Jewish policies under the Vichy regime led to a first prosecution in France forcrimes against humanity in 1979, 15 years after a law made this crimeimprescriptible.[29]Jean Leguay, second in command in theFrench National Police during the NaziOccupation of France had been one of the main instigator of theVel' d'Hiv Roundup in which 13,152 Jews were arrested and sent into deportation, including 4 000 children.[30] Although Leguay died before the end of the instruction, this prosecution opened a path for theFrench justice and the trials followed one another in the 1980s.Klaus Barbie was extradited fromBolivia in 1983 and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987 for his role in the roundup of theIzieu Children and the murder of numerous resistants fighters, includingJean Moulin.Paul Touvier was arrested in 1989 and also sentenced to life imprisonment in 1994 for the execution of 7 Jewish hostages at theRillieux-la-Pape cemetery in 1944. After serving as budget minister underValéry Giscard d'Estaing,Maurice Papon was in 1998 convicted of crimes against humanity for his participation in the deportation of more than 1600 Jews during the occupation.
Simultaneously, stories emerged from theNazi concentration camps survivors, and the complicity of occupied states in these atrocities.[31] In 1985,Shoah byClaude Lanzmann gave a voice to these former detainees in a 9 hours long documentary.French Jews organized themselves in associations like theSons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France created bySerge Klarsfeld. The 50th anniversary of the Vel' d'Hiv round up was commemorated in 1992 by François Mitterrand, but it was not until July 1995 that PresidentJacques Chirac formally recognized the responsibility of the state in the deportation of French Jews during the Second World War.[32]
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