Suchergebnisse

"Was nimmt sich dieser Amerikaner heraus, anzukommen und unsere Leichen aus den Wandschränken zu zerren?", fragte "Le Monde" am 1. Februar 1973 empört. Dieser unverschämte Amerikaner war der an der New Yorker Columbia-Universität lehrende 40-jährige Historiker Robert O. Paxton, und aus den Schränken zerrte er mit seiner Studie über Frankreich im Zweiten Weltkrieg die Leichen der Besatzungszeit. Das Werk, 1972 in den USA erschienen und ein Jahr später auch auf Französisch, löste eine erhebliche Kontroverse aus. Es war das richtige Buch zur richtigen Zeit: Nach einem Vierteljahrhundert der "unterdrückten Erinnerung" an die "années noires" der deutschen Besatzung wandte sich die französische Öffentlichkeit nach 1968 dem Thema verstärkt zu, und vermeintliche Gewissheiten fielen scheppernd in sich zusammen. Bereits in Marcel Ophuls' für das Fernsehen produziertem Dokumentarfilm "Le Chagrin et la Pitié" wurde der Mythos einer in der Résistance vereinten französischen Nation dekonstruiert. Vom Programmdirektor als zu schockierend empfunden, wurde der Film nicht ausgestrahlt. Als er 1971 in die Kinos kam, strömten die Menschen monatelang in die Vorstellungen. Auch in Literatur und Spielfilmen zeigte sich der Bruch mit den Repräsentationen der Vichy-Vergangenheit Anfang der 1970er-Jahre. In der Geschichtswissenschaft zweifelten neue Studien die vormals dominante (gaullistische und Pétain-verherrlichende) Interpretation der Geschichte Frankreichs im Zweiten Weltkrieg an. Warum war gerade Paxtons Buch dennoch eine "Revolution"?

Eugenics and Social Security in France before and after the Vichy Regime Historiography of French eugenics has long been hindered by a mechanistic conception derived from history of ideas, which postulated that it was incompatible with pronatalism and catholicism, with republicanism and Lamarckism; and that it simply collapsed after World War II. The reference to the transnational model of «Latin eugenics» redirects the thinking around a more plastic definition of eugenics that stresses its connections with social hygiene, in order to better understand the conversions it has undergone after 1945 in connection with the circulation of scientific and administrative models. Beyond medicine and psychiatry, genetics and occupational medicine, are particularly concerned demography, biotypology, educational and occupational choice, the fight against alcoholism, and of course family planning. Eugenics has also paradoxically contributed to the psychologization of human relationships. Taking it seriously allows historians to return to the issue of norms underlying population, social and health policies over the past century.

This paper reviews the history of local professional associations in Morocco under the French Protectorate and focuses on the period of Vichy rule in the colony (1940-1942). It examines the partial application of corporatism in Morocco as Vichy's preferred method of professional organization, which was expected to turn local attention away from a perceived nationalism to a seemingly benign economic activity. By investigating a local corporatist association operating in those years, this paper shows that the corporatist project unwittingly turned into a nationalist one not of its own making. The paper further examines the relationships between economy, colonialism, nationalism, racism, and Muslim-Jewish relations in Morocco during the Vichy period.

The French police during the Second World War were used both as a tool of collaboration between the Vichy regime and the Nazi occupier and to enforce an internal political reform, known as the National Revolution. The police initially responded enthusiastically, since an input of new resources was promised and the regime's main opponents – communists and foreigners – were also traditional police targets. A fierce repression ensued, police actions including the handing over of communists to the Nazis and playing an important role in deporting foreign Jews to their deaths. However, after two years police support began to falter, and by mid-1943 many police forces were at collapsing point. The police were suffering from an acute patriotic identity crisis and were the target of Resistance propaganda. The promised new resources had largely failed to materialise, which both demoralised the police and further undermined their efficiency.