Report on conference: ‘Vichy and the everyday: new perspectives on daily life under German
Occupation, 1940-1944’
This one day interdisciplinary conference was held at the Institute of Advanced Study, University of
Warwick on the 21st March 2016, and organised by Dr David Lees (Warwick) and Dr Lindsey Dodd
(Huddersfield).
The conference programme comprised speakers from a range of disciplines, institutions and indeed
nations. Participants included early career academics, including both of the conference organisers,
alongside more established academics and even senior figures in the field of the historiography of
the Occupation and Vichy France. The concluding remarks were offered by two such experts,
Professor Robert Gildea (Oxford) and Professor Hanna Diamond (Cardiff).
The day opened with a welcome from the conference organisers, dealing with both the practical and
the academic aspects of the day. Lindsey Dodd outlined the rationale for the conference, namely the
opportunity to explore the question of everyday life during the Occupation through an
interdisciplinary approach and seeking to refresh the notion of the ‘everyday’ in this period. This was
then followed by the first panel, chaired by David Lees, around the theme of ‘Coping.’ Camille Mahé
(Sciences Po) gave a fascinating paper about the ways in which children’s games were harnessed by
the Vichy authorities to promote the agenda of the National Revolution. Mahé’s paper was then
followed by Isabelle von Bueltzingsloewen (Lyon II) who dealt with the methodological challenges of
reconstructing the everyday life of a Lyonnais family who had suffered loss during the Occupation
when the father of the family was killed during the Allied bombing of his company warehouse. We
then turned to the way in which the everyday was borne out in propaganda, specifically radio
material produced by the Vichy authorities with the aim of trying to persuade audiences in
agricultural regions to share their products with townspeople, which was thoroughly analysed by Kay
Chadwick (Liverpool). The final paper of the session, was delivered by Sylvère Aït Amour, from Rails
et Histoire, who discussed the ways in which the everyday lives of railway workers, their families and
others associated with the railways have been documented in the oral archives of Rails et Histoire,
touching in particular on the ways in which the theme of the everyday was developed in a special
oral exhibition at the Archives Nationales at Pierrefitte-sur-Seine between April and June 2015. The
panel revealed a multiplicity of connections and areas for future discussion, ranging from the
question of macro v micro histories, to the ways in which the apparently mundane could be
developed by the Vichy authorities into something of absolute importance, in the case of both food,
in Chadwick’s paper, and games, in that of Mahé. Many of these connections and areas of mutual
interest were further developed as the conference progressed.
The second panel, organised around the theme of ‘Helping’ chaired by Steve Wharton (Bath) saw
Lindsey Dodd speak on the everyday experiences of child refugees in the Creuse département.
Dodd’s paper dealt in particular with the ways in which ‘official’ refugees dealt with the often
traumatic experience of moving to an unfamiliar rural location. This focus on the support offered to
the refugees from Creuse residents was complemented by Shannon Fogg’s illuminating paper on the
support provided for middle-class families in the Marseilles region by the American Friends Service
Committee (the Quakers). Both Fogg and Dodd highlighted that help was required by a wide tranche
of the French population under Occupation and this was not a phenomenon restricted to the
working-classes. Both papers touched on the sense that everyday experiences were often
emotionally complex; for some, as was the case for a handful of the child refugees, rural life proved
troubling and even traumatic, while for others, as was the case for some of the middle-class families
examined by Fogg, the Occupation maintained the importance of ‘keeping up appearances.’
After lunch, the third panel of the day was organised around the theme of ‘Confrontation.’ Chaired
by Mason Norton, the panel again revealed further common points of interest and raised further
probing questions about everyday experiences during the Occupation. The panel began with Sarah
Frank (University of the Free State, South Africa) exploring the ways in which French colonial
Prisoners of War experienced captivity in German Prisoner of War camps. Frank’s research explored
a range of themes, including gender and race, in its vivid depiction of the conditions in such camps,
which were harnessed by the German authorities to demonstrate the importance of the Reich and
undermine Vichy’s claims on the Empire. Frank revealed particular tensions between the German
camp guards and the African Prisoners of War over relationships with French women, with the
guards prohibiting any such relationship between prisoners and local women. Byron Schirbock
(Cologne) then built on this theme of confrontation along gender lines, with his examination of the
heavily-militarised and apparently well-regulated brothels organised for German soldiers. Drawing
on photographic evidence, Shirbock emphasised the importance of these brothels to the German
authorities, while also demonstrating the historic links between the development of brothels in
France under German Occupation in World War I and again during World War II. Finally, Ayshka Sené
(Cardiff) brought the panel to a close with a further examination of the relationships between
German soldiers and women, this time investigating the internment of British women in French
camps under Occupation, including that at Vittel. Sené’s research revealed a new approach to the
examination of internment during the Occupation; as with the Colonial POW camps examined by
Frank, the camps for British women were less restrictive and repressive than the narrative of
internment during the period typically suggests. Indeed, Sené offered some particularly informative
examples of the ways in which British women enjoyed the occasional visit away from the camps,
while they were likewise offered the opportunity for socialising within. The panel thus brought
together three fascinating approaches to the treatment of gender in everyday life under Occupation,
while also demonstrating the sheer variety of everyday experiences for French, British and African
people during the period.
The final panel of the day, grouped around the theme of ‘Challenge’ was chaired by Lindsey Dodd.
The panel brought together three papers which each examined the ways in which the everyday
presented challenges to individuals and to societies, and indeed how individuals likewise challenged
the dominant view of the everyday. Mason Norton’s paper investigated small acts of everyday
resistance in Haute Normandie and the Limousin, arguing that for some people under Occupation
the challenge to the dominant narrative of the everyday often took a very small-scale approach.
Norton’s lucid account of small acts of resistance demonstrated again the sheer variety of everyday
experiences in the period, while also offering a counterpoint to the confrontations explored in the
earlier panel, though that is not to suggest that the wider theme of resistance did not also feature,
as, for example, in Sené’s work. David Lees then explored the challenges faced by those individuals
who set out to present the dominant narrative of Vichy’s National Revolution in film propaganda,
most notably the material hardships of documentary filmmaking, before examining the tensions
between the dominant promotion of sexuality and gender in film propaganda and the absence in the
same material of other aspects of this dominant ideology (notably anti-Semitism). Lees explored in
particular the portrayal of women and girls, apparently in ‘everyday’ situations, in documentary film
of Philippe Este and Louis Merlin. Following on from the examination of particular aspects of the
portrayal of everyday life in this material, and the establishment of a dominant narrative of
femininity and motherhood, Steve Wharton’s paper explored the everyday in documentary films
with particular reference to André Robert’s ‘Arts, Sciences, Voyages’ series of films. Wharton’s paper
emphasised the scale of spending on Vichy documentary film, and the transformation of the
medium into a form of ‘shop window’ for the portrayal of the everyday, and in particular the cult of
Pétainisme, again demonstrating the establishment of a dominant narrative of the everyday in Vichy
propaganda. The panel thus brought together the sense of challenging dominant narratives in the
form of Norton’s focus on small acts of local resistance, while also establishing the ways in which
dominant narratives—of Pétainisme, of gender and of sexuality—frequently challenged the
‘everyday’ lived experiences of the French people.
Having witnessed a range of papers dedicated to different aspects of the history of the everyday
under Vichy and the German Occupation, the concluding remarks for the event were offered by
Professor Robert Gildea and Professor Hanna Diamond. Both speakers emphasised the importance
of studying the ‘everyday’ in the period, while also noting the ways in which the papers provoked
questions about future avenues of discussion for the subject and for the wider historiography of
France’s ‘Dark Years.’
In short, this was an informative, illuminating and thought-provoking study day which would not
have been possible without the generous support of the Humanities Research Centre, University of
Warwick, the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France, the Connecting
Cultures GRP, University of Warwick, the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of
Warwick, the Royal Historical Society, the Society for the Study of French History and the School of
Music and Humanities at the University of Huddersfield. We are grateful for the support of these
organisations and bodies and are thrilled that the majority of the conference papers will be
published in an edited collection with Bloomsbury Academic.
Dr David Lees and Dr Lindsey Dodd, Conference organisers