Vichy Syndrome

[Vandyyke]

 I am writing a paper on Henry Rousso's book, "The Vichy Syndrome". I would like to cite a passage from Charles Solomon's book, "Handbook to Happiness". It is the passage regarding, "Owning the baby" Can someone post it for me?

[Vandyyke]

                                                                   
Here's my paper. (I really need to spend more time on it but its due today) I learned a lot about French history!

       “I have tried within the limits of my power not to become a prisoner of the syndrome I am describing.” 1
                                                            Henry Rousso



     If the purpose of this book is to redeem France for its failure to deal with its past then

Mr. Rousso has painted a good picture. His theme is about a nation that for 30 years

denied and suppressed the truth about its collaboration with Adolph Hitler and 

participation in the holocaust. Eventually this nation took the painful steps in confronting

itself and by putting the guilty on trial, has made steps towards a redemption. In his

approach at identifying the problem of the French government’s owning up to their

history, Henry Rousso has chosen to look at  “The Memory of Vichy”. It is through their

“memory,” borrowing metaphorically from the work of Sigmund Freud, he claims to

identify a “neurosis” which reveals itself through any “…patent topicality reference to

 the past…”2 He also attempts to establish ”…a hierarchy of symptoms”3 by investigating

the reactions to “…commemorations, film, and historiography,”4 and finally by

identifying an “obsession” in French efforts to decide how the collaboration should be

remembered.

       After poring over this material I would like to ask the following question: in his

effort to present the history of the Post WWII French government as a patient suffering 

from the effects of trauma, neurosis, repression etc…  has Rousso  reduced the seriousness of  the issue (owning up to French collaboration with the Nazis and

participation in the  Holocaust)?  By using this psychological illustration Mr. Rousso

“…has given us a subtle approach…”5  to the issue of the collaboration. Yet, is this

appropriate? Does giving a metaphorical diagnosis to the issue provide those responsible

with an excuse?  After considering this material I can’t help but reflect on the similarities

in the Alberto Gonzales testimony (and numerous other contemporary political

headlines) who, at a senate hearing, stated, “I don’t recall” 72 times.6  Isn’t the truth

behind the “syndrome” the fact that De Gaulle, through politics, suppressed any efforts

by the left to bring about any actions towards accountability. Isn’t the issue the lack of

agency to bring forward the truth about the Vichy government?  It is the purpose of this

paper to examine Mr. Rousso’s presentation of the memory of the French. In addition

I would like to pose questions to illustrate my perception of Mr. Rousso’s reasoning. 



                                                         The Neurosis


      Before I begin, I should clarify. Although Mr. Rousso uses the term associated

with psychoanalysis, “neurosis” he explains it is used “simply as metaphor”7. By this I

believe he means any manifestations that reveal the controversy behind the Vichy

government are evidence of  the issues still standing.  Mr. Rousso believes that memories
                                                                       
of the occupation have proven to be enduring and controversial because of  the inability

                                                                   
of the French to reflect upon their trauma and a number of events that succeeded the war.

[Vandyyke]

By controversial he means events of  “crisis situations”8 (public outcry about the
                                                                 
collaboration) that have appeared since 1956, vanished, and reappeared to the point of

“obsession” since the early 1970’s. The cause of this, Mr. Rousso asserts is primarily due
                                                                   
to the fact “…the tragedy that France suffered in those years was unprecedented…”9

 90,000 soldiers died, 2,000,000 taken prisoner, and crushing, humiliating military                                                                 

defeats. The neurosis, resulted from the “Unfinished Mourning”10  specifically, “the

French had no time to grasp, come to terms with, and mourn what had befallen them in

one catastrophe before they found themselves caught up yet in another…”11  The

catastrophes afterwards were a sequence of events that quickly followed the end of the

occupation. These events were initiated by a speech given by Charles de Gaulle that

“…founded a myth of the post Vichy period…”12 (The myth being that France had

liberated itself.) The truth was that France had been liberated by its allies. Next, the

events in Germany and the subsequent cold war served to diminish the left wing’s role in

the resistance and bring about a “…revival of  ‘neo-Vichyite’ sentiiment…”13   Fear of

the communist presence in Germany/Russia enabled the right to regain its strength in

government and at the same time  diminish the power of the left. The neurosis resulted

from what Freud asserted was “a mechanism in the brain unconsciously represses this

trauma from our awareness.”14 This “repressed memory” caused an inability to bring

closure to the trauma. French citizens were like a woman who has lost an infant in
                                                                     
childbirth. A death has occurred yet the mother has not had the opportunity to bond with

 the child and therefore is not able to release what she never had. Likewise the French

have suffered a national distress because the “child was never owned.”15


                                       REPRESSION OF MEMORY

 
“Over the next few years the visible signs of the wartime legacy had gradually

vanished”16 Mr. Rousso seems to assert that the French were involved in a political tango

of sorts. There was at the same time a lack of accountability over Vichy and effort by de

Gaulle to rewrite the role of the collaboration itself. De Gaulle would do this by

continuously pushing the envelope to reduce the role of the resistance and define

the Petain government in the context of the “two strings argument.”17 (This argument

claims Petain had an equal role in the deliverance of France).  He begins his

discussion on repressions by describing the “relatively sedate”18  outrage over the

postwar trials that  began in 1954. Also he shows us that the “…purge failed to establish

a clear defenition of the crime and misdemeanors of the collaboration…”19 Next, he

continues to show evidence that De Gaulle made continuous efforts to appeal to pro-
                                                                                   
Petain sentiment and refer to the resistance in abstractions.  The honoring of a

resistance fighter, Jean Moulin, was used by the general to “…upstage his former

subordinate…” and “…relegate the resistance to a secondary role…”20  De Gaulle’s
                                                                   
policy would continue until he would leave office and die shortly thereafter. After that De                                                                     

[Vandyyke]

Gaulle was no longer running the government and France would soon begin to face

itself.
                               
                                           
                                        The Broken Mirror  1971-1974


          In the chapter titled “The Broken Mirror” Rousso discusses the anticipation of

artists who sensed the French were ready to face their Vichy past. Mediums of film

and books were used to bring the collaboration out into the open. Here, for the first time,

men and women were openly telling their stories about the Vichy government. In the

documentary, “The Sorrow and the Pity” interviewees discuss the reasons for the

 occupation, such as anti-Semitism. Other interviews include French youth who wore

German uniforms and  fought on the Eastern Front. The impact of the film had a

Major impact upon the public, “It was the first deliberate effort at demystification.”21 It

provoked a division between people who had lived through the war and those who

hadn’t.  Most importantly it introduced a new way to interpret history in society. The

children of collaborators began telling their stories. The Paul Touvier affair (a recognized

war criminal who had been pardoned by the French President, George Pompidou in                                                                 
 
1971)22 brought out public outrage and a new trial. Yet, Rousso states its impact sent the
  French into an obsession for its desire to reveal the truth about the Vichy government.
       

                                                       The Obsession


“After 1974 open and explicit references to 1940
                                                         became a constant of the cultural scene.”23



    The next two chapters of his book Mr. Rousso devotes to the accomplishments of

bringing the past into a “tangible ready reality”24 by the transmission of memory through

the agency of film, trials and essays. This was accomplished through what he calls the

“Jewish” and “political Obsession” over Vichy. He discusses the outrage over statements

made during an Interview in 1978 by a former officer in the Vichy government. He also

discusses the airing of a miniseries, “The Holocaust” on national television and the

indictment of another war criminal, Martin Aznani. Finally, he  discusses the

changes in the French political landscape climaxing with the Klause Barbie trial.   


           In review of what Mr. Rousso has sequenced, the inability of the French to mourn

 the trauma of the war,  the government’s suppression of memory and mythologizing of

French history and finally, as the obsession with the past, the metaphor of the psychosis

reaches a conclusion. By bringing the testimonies forward and prosecuting the guilty, the                                                                     

French, were “restoring the reality that had become myth.”25  They were owning up and

taking responsibility for the past.


  “Rousso’s book provides a subtle answer for those who still accuse the French of

not having confronted their past.”
                                                                 Stanley Hoffman


     Mr. Hoffman’s forward reveals a motive of Henry Rousso’s work. It is the

redemption of France. It is the “subtle answer”26 to the criticism of  French  participation

[Vandyyke]

 in the holocaust. Mr. Rousso  presents to us a confused and sick patient who was

‘traumatized” by circumstances of its history, brainwashed by General de Gaulle’s

speeches, yet through “counseling,’ primarily the movie, “The Sorrow and the
Pity’, France is able to identify the guilty and bring them to accountability, prosecution
and incarceration. It is a very convincing argument. However, it leaves me with a sense
of something all to familiar. It is, “The Memory Card” 

   
                                ''It's possible to forget,''    Ronald Reagan 1987 27
   
   Throughout Mr. Rousso’s book there seems to be an elephant in the room ignored. It is

the fact that the primary motive for the French to pardon, mythologize, deny, forget their

past involvement  in the collaboration is simply political posturing.  It is an ugly fact

of the occupation that  the political culture at the time was sympathetic towards Hitler’s

ideology and political goals.  Mr. Rousso has noted that when the chamber of Deputies

and Senate ratified the armistice it voted 569-80 to grant Petain near absolute powers.
                                                               
 The policies of his administration included “…the proclamation of anti-semitic laws…”.

Mr. Rousso also notes that “manifestations of anti-Semitism in the Southern Zone (of

France) which owed nothing to the Nazi’s”28  This resulted in the “deportation of 76,000

French and foreign Jews, fewer of 3 % survived”  How could this happen?  Was it the

the vulnerability of traumatized nation reacting out of fear or was it simply the fact that

the French society at that time were very anti-Semitic? It is reasonable to conclude that

the repression of memory we see during  the reign of De Gaulle has more to do with old

regime than it does with a psychosis.  If we look at Mr. Rousso’s , “Temperature Curve

of the Syndrome” 29  we see the history of  the suppression of the facts about the

collaboration. He gauges his thermometer at an “acute crisis” from the end of the war

until the end of the Oradour trial of 1954. After this point the temperature drops to a

calm, never rising above “fever” level until 1970. Why? Rousso gives us the answer,

“The epic was over, on 9 November 1970 (De Gaulle) died.”30   After this event we

see the “explosions…of literature, film and scholarship.”31 that are the “aftershocks of

the 1940’s…”32   The death of De Gaulle opens agency for a new generation to distance

themselves from the evils of their parents and redefine the French to their world.

     
                                                               
   “Mr. Rousso uses a medical Lexicon to refer to history-memory as dependent on

working consciously with unconscious memories to revise accounts of history”33


    Mr. Rousso has presented a well thought out, documented, statistically supported

history of  French memory of the Vichy government. Just as the History of Mentalities

historian so he has attempted to interpret what was in the minds of the people in the past.

This attempt merits my deepest respect and admiration. Yet I am not convinced that his

presentation is without some sort of bias to empathize with the French people.  I  am

not convinced that the trauma they experienced prior to and after the invasion prohibited

them in facing the reality of what  they did.  Rather I choose to interpret the symptoms

[Vandyyke]

as reasonably thought out strategies of the De Gaulle Regime.


                                                 
                                 
                                                Closing Thoughts


     
     It has been 5 years now that the leaders of our nation made a decision to invade Iraq.

At the time of this decision the American public was constantly being informed of 

“Weapons of Mass Destruction” and “A Mushroom Cloud.”  Regardless of the fact that a

 few of us were demanding more evidence, the majority of U.S. citizens supported the

invasion knowing that innocent civilians would die as a result.  Five years into the

war American citizens have been given countless other reasons as to why we invaded.

                                                                       

                       A Subtle Answer to the Critics of Americas Invasion of Iraq                                                                 


“We are fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”  We are bringing

democracy to the Middle East.”  The list goes on and on.  If we were to conduct a poll

today and ask Americans the question, “Why do you think so many Americans

supported the invasion of  Iraq?” I seriously doubt anyone would admit, “We needed to

assert ourselves as the major power in the world.” However, I believe it is the reason.

This said, will historians interpret our inability to face the truth of this decision because,

“…of the trauma Americans faced as a result of 911?”