The French Defeat of 1940

Reassessments

Joel Blatt, Joel Blatt

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 1997
• ISBN:
  9780857457172
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: French History
• Index: History

Why France, the major European continental victor in 1918, suffered total defeat in six weeks at the hands of the vanquished power of 1918 only two decades later remains moot. Why the stunning reversal of fortunes? In this volume thirteen prominent scholars reexamine the French debacle of 1940 in interwar perspectives, utilizing fresh analysis, original approaches, and new sources. Although the tenor of the volume is critical, the contributors also suggest that French preparations for war knew successes as well as failures, that French defeat was not inevitable, and that the Battle of France might have turned out differently if different choices had been made and other paths been followed.

VI

THE MISSED OPPORTUNITY

French Refugee Policy in Wartime, 1939–1940¹

Vicki Caron^*

“Contemporary history has created a new kind of human being – the kind that are put in concentration camps by their foes and internment camps by their friends.”

Hannah Arendt²

Throughout the 1930s, France's treatment of Central and East European refugees fluctuated between a hard-line policy that sought to get rid of them and a more liberal one that allowed at least some to remain in order to strengthen the country economically and militarily. When war was declared on 3 September 1939, the tension between these alternatives did not disappear, but instead became sharper. Already in the spring of 1939, despite the harsh anti-immigrant decree laws of the previous year,³ the government passed a series of measures that indicated a willingness to use the country's 3,000,000 immigrants to prepare for the war effort. On 12 April, in response to pressure from the General Staff and public opinion, the government announced a new decree law that facilitated the enlistment of foreigners into the regular army. Henceforth, all male foreigners who had been in the country more than two months were required to serve during peacetime either in the regular army or the Foreign Legion, while during wartime they were required to serve either in the prestataire service – noncombatant auxiliary labor service – or in the regular army if they were beneficiaries of the right of asylum.⁴ On 21 April another decree law attempted to facilitate the settlement of foreign industrialists on French soil, especially those whose activities might prove useful in the event of war.⁵ When war became a reality, however, these plans fell by the wayside. In response to fifth column fears the government completely banned foreigners from serving in the regular army, while it resorted to a policy of mass internment for Central European males, who were now declared “enemy aliens.”

Nevertheless, until the German invasion of the Low Countries in May 1940, pressures militating in favor of a more liberal refugee policy continued to operate. In response to public pressure at home and abroad, the government created criblage or sifting commissions to review the dossiers of all internees to determine who were Nazi sympathizers and who were loyal to the Allied cause. Moreover, despite considerable delays, efforts were eventually made to utilize the refugees militarily. Certain groups of refugees – the Poles and Czechs – were allowed to join their respective national legions. Others, depending upon their age and fitness, were given the option of joining the Foreign Legion or enlisting for prestataire service.

This progress was brought to an abrupt halt by the German invasion. In response to a second wave of fifth column hysteria, the government resorted again to wholesale internments of Central European refugees. These were far more comprehensive than those of September, and for the first time included women. It was only at this moment, when France most needed additional manpower, that the effort to utilize refugees was abandoned. Whether a more determined and efficient use of the refugees would have made any difference to the outcome of the battle for France is impossible to know. What is clear, however, is that the government lost a significant opportunity to draw upon an important and highly spirited source of anti-Nazi fighting power. Military exigencies gave way to suspicion of fifth columns, procrastination, bureaucratic ineptitude, and even overt xenophobia and antisemitism, suggesting that the administration never understood the urgency of mobilizing every available resource. From the vantage point of the refugees, this missed opportunity became emblematic of the political ineptitude and lack of determination that led to the debacle of June 1940.

Although the internment of “enemy aliens” was certainly a possibility with the outbreak of war,⁶ it was by no means predestined. Until 1 September, there were numerous indications that France intended to treat German, Austrian, Czech and Saar refugees with considerable leniency and to use them, together with the large mass of stateless refugees, including East European Jews, to serve in some capacity in the armed forces. According to a police report of February 1939, only White Russian émigrés were suspected of harboring pro-Nazi sympathies. Germans, however, were regarded as politically reliable. Despite their strong sense of German identity, these refugees, this report maintained, felt they had been “cast out of the ‘German national body,’” and regarded a “European conflagration…[as] a generalized form of civil war.”⁷

Moreover, the government did nothing to deter those Central European refugees, who, together with thousands of other foreigners, turned out en masse to sign up for military service. Already in the spring, just after the proclamation of the 12 April decree law, both the police and press reported thousands of foreigners volunteering,⁸ and in September this trend reached a crescendo. Only days after the outbreak of war, French military authorities admitted they were unable to cope with this deluge, and they turned the registration process over to private associations, such as the Amis de la République and the Ligue Internationale contre l'Antisémitisme (LICA).⁹ According to the newspaper L' Epoque, the Amis de la République registered over 1,000 foreigners per day in September, while the Jewish War Veterans registered over 9,000 Jewish immigrants for regular army service as of 8 October, and another 9,000 for duty in the Polish and Czech Legions.¹⁰ This registration drive was enthusiastically endorsed by the various émigré associations. German refugees, the Fédération des Émigrés d'Allemagne en France declared, “will fulfill their duty with the same devotion, the same spirit and the same courage as other Frenchmen.”¹¹ As the émigré writer and journalist, Leo Lania, explained, for these refugees “who had lost…everything…faith in France was the only barrier between themselves and bottomless despair.”¹²

Despite this outpouring of pro-French loyalties, the government ultimately chose to ignore the provisions of the 12 April decree law and instead fell back on a policy treating foreigners in general and Central Europeans in particular as potential “enemy aliens.” On 8 September Prime Minister Edouard Daladier declared that “foreigners are authorized to enlist for the duration of the war in the Foreign Legion and the Foreign Legion only.”¹³ This order came as a bitter pill for most foreigners since they wanted above all to serve in the regular army, and service in the Legion, even if “only” for the duration of the war rather than the regular five-year stint, was not an attractive option given its harsh disciplinary regime and reputation as a haven for hardened criminals. An even more severe fate lay in store for German, Austrian, Czech and Saar refugees. On 4 September a decree was announced ordering all males from “Greater Germany” and between the ages of 17 and 50 to report to designated assembly centers; ten days later this age limit was extended to 65. Those summoned were told to bring a two-day supply of food, as well as blankets, underwear and eating utensils. All other subjects of “Greater Germany” – men and women – were ordered to report to police headquarters or city halls to apply for new identity papers and were henceforth forbidden to leave their neighborhoods without police authorization.¹⁴ Most seriously, the government froze the bank accounts of the detainees, inflicting severe economic hardship on their families.¹⁵

Although the refugees had been told to prepare for a 48-hour stay, most were detained for at least ten days and sometimes up to a few weeks.¹⁶ At the Colombes Stadium outside Paris it took several days to register the 10,000 refugees who reported. Living conditions were abysmal. A single water pump served the entire camp population, and water was strictly rationed. Food consisted of dry bread and pork liver paté; kosher food was unavailable. Large pails set up in the corners of the stadium served as toilets, and the refugees had to sleep in the open air. Chaos reigned outside the camp as well. Government officials refused to release any information to desperate wives and relatives who congregated outside the camp daily, and journalists were strictly banned.¹⁷

Within days, the scope of the internments was widened considerably. On 9 September, the Minister of the Interior, Albert Sarraut, issued another decree law that allowed even naturalized foreigners to be stripped of their citizenship on the mere suspicion of involvement in activities injurious to national security.¹⁸ Another decree law of 17 September, 1939 authorized police to arrest all politically suspect foreigners and either expel them or send them to an internment camp.¹⁹ Armed with these decrees, the police initiated a fierce crackdown against hundreds of foreigners in France, most of whom were stateless communists or left-wing dissidents who, as a result of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 23 August, had been transformed overnight into enemies of the state.²⁰ Males were initially brought to the Roland Garros tennis stadium, while the women were sent to the Petite Roquette prison in Paris.

By mid-September it became clear that the vast majority of detained refugees were not about to be released soon. Instead, they were offered the choice of enlisting in the Foreign Legion or of being interned. Although the Ministry of Defense stipulated that the Germans were to be allowed to sign up only for the regular five-year term of service, Austrians were supposed to be allowed to serve solely for the duration of the war.²¹ In practice, however, it appears that everyone was offered only the five-year term of service.²² As one refugee complained bitterly to Emile Buré's conservative but pro-refugee paper, L' Ordre, the choice of internment or the Legion was “cruel” and “undeserved,” since nearly all male refugees of military age had already volunteered for regular army service.²³ Fearing that enlistment in the Legion would foreclose this possibility, most refugees opted for internment.²⁴

At the end of September, therefore, the military began to redistribute the approximately 18,000 detainees, of whom about 5,000 were Austrians and the rest Germans, to one of the 80 or so internment camps throughout the country.²⁵ Some of these camps, like St. Cyprien, Argelès, Barcarès and Gurs, had been erected in March of 1939 to absorb the half-million Spanish refugees who had flooded across the border.²⁶ Others, such as Rieucros in the Lozère, which held politically suspect women, served as detention centers for foreigners considered dangerous to national security but who could not be expelled.²⁷ Still other camps, particularly in the north, had been hastily improvised in September for the sole purpose of absorbing Central European refugees.²⁸ The worst camp was almost certainly Le Vernet in the Ariège, which housed politically suspect foreign males; of the approximately 900 refugees interned as of mid-October, the majority were either Spanish or Central and Eastern Europeans, including many who had fought in the International Brigades. By December, after most of the Spaniards had been inducted into the Foreign Legion, one relief committee estimated that 80 to 90 per cent of the remaining inmates were Jews.²⁹ According to Arthur Koestler and others, those sent to Le Vernet were treated worse than German POWs. The camp was cordoned off by barbed wire, the guards carried whips, and the inmates' heads were shaven. Despite the rigorous work discipline, proper clothes were not provided, and the inmates were sent out in rags. Military in character, the camp held four roll calls a day, and visits from friends and relatives were strictly forbidden. The barracks were overcrowded, unlit and poorly insulated, and the sole furnishings consisted of bare wooden planks that served as beds. Except for the food, which was meager, French authorities provided nothing: blankets, eating utensils, soap, clothing, even furniture, had to be provided by private relief agencies. “[A]s regards food, accommodation and hygiene,” Koestler commented, “Vernet was even below the level of Nazi concentration camps.” And although the inmates were not deliberately tortured, the sum total of suffering experienced here was, according to Koestler, not significantly different.³⁰

Although this harsh disciplinary regime was unique to Le Vernet, living conditions at other camps were not perceptibly better. At Meslay-du-Maine in the Mayenne west of Paris, neither barracks nor tents had been set up when the first detainees arrived. According to Lania, only the long ditch that served as the latrine had been prepared. It was three weeks before a hot meal was served, and fresh water was even scarcer than at Colombes.³¹ Although Meslay may have been more primitive than other camps, it was by no means exceptional. Furniture, heat and lighting were everywhere lacking. Many camps had no beds, and refugees had to sleep on straw. As one former German statesman testified, “No means to wash oneself; no canteen was ready, and I am no longer a youngster to lie on straw and hard stone floors.”³² By early November the American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) reported that refugees were dying due to the lack of heat and winter clothing. Family visits and mail were extremely limited, and overcrowded conditions and lack of solitude drove many to the breaking point.³³ By contrast, the camp food was considered even by inmates to be “very good – both as to quality and quantity,” and relief committees also noted that guards generally treated the internees with respect as opposed to those at Le Vernet.³⁴

Beyond these material deprivations, however, the greatest torment for many refugees was the conviction that France had betrayed them. As Lion Feuchtwanger explained, the only reason he had remained in France since emigrating there in 1933 was his hope to participate in the impending battle against Hitler. Now, he commented bitterly, “The French not only refused any cooperation from us German anti-Fascists, they locked us up.”³⁵ Compounding this disappointment, internees were not allowed to participate in noncombatant defense work. Instead, they were either left idle or given what seemed senseless work unrelated to the war effort. The French government, Koestler lamented, “did not want us, even as canon fodder.”³⁶ Moreover, while most refugees recognized the government's need to sift out the fifth columnists among them, the inordinately long delays in implementing this process eventually provoked anguished protests. In his famous plea on behalf of the refugees, L'Allemagne exilée en France, the émigré writer Ernst Erich Noth warned in the fall of 1939 that if the process were not completed quickly, France would lose a vast reservoir of fighting power. At the same time, he pointed out, the internments were providing grist for the Nazi propaganda mill, which delighted in showing that the West despised the ...