Grand IllusIon
Grand IllusIon
The Third reich, the Paris exposition, and the Cultural seduction of France
Karen Fiss
The University of Chicago Press : : Chicago & London
is associate professor of visual studies and design at the California College of
the Arts, San Francisco
Kare n Fiss
he University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
he University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2009 by Karen Fiss
All rights reserved. Published 2009
Printed in the United States of America
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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-25199-8
ISBN-10: 0-226-25199-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-25201-8
ISBN-10: 0-226-25201-9
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(cloth)
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CIP data to come
∞ he paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National
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Z39.48-1992.
In memory of my mother,
G er da Ba r Ba ra M ay
1924–2001
and her ensemble of wonderful émigrés and friends:
ellen
and
and
irv i n G Wo lF so n, Ch ar loT T e
r i C Ky G u TMa n ,
and
lena WulF
co n t e n ts
Acknowledgments
ix
introduction
1
9
1
The Cultural Politics of rapprochement
45
2
The Production of the German Pavilion at the 1937 exposition
99
3
The reception of nazi Culture
131
4
Franco-German relations in the Cinema
161
5
The visual Pleasure of Mass ornament
191
Notes
219
Bibliography
259
Index
000
epilogue: vichy and the legacy of the 1930s
i nt ro d ucti o n
The many games, fêtes, visits, the cordially exchanged remarks, the personal contacts
established on the occasion of the expositions, the events, as well as the effusions that followed one after another from mid-1936 to the end of 1937, allowed us to have an optimistic view of the situation. But this was at most an intermission between acts, during which
time refreshments and bonbons were served, and after which the tragedy resumed.
Hitler used this interlude to accelerate, behind the scenes, the Reich’s preparations for
war, while in the theater, he reassured the public and tried to lull to sleep the vigilance of
their governments. Nothing better illuminates his profound duplicity.
a n dr é Fr a n çoi s-Pon CeT 1
Written just ater the Second World War, the memoirs of the French ambassador to
Berlin, André François-Poncet, recount the atmosphere of rapprochement and cultural exchange that existed between France and the hird Reich during the crucial
years 1936 and 1937. François-Poncet suggests that the expositions and festivities
that took place between the two countries encouraged the French government to
reevaluate the age-old rivalry in newly optimistic terms. Many French oicials had
subscribed to the belief that the degree to which the two nations increased cultural
contact was inversely related to the probability of military conlict between them:
the more the two peoples interacted in the arena of art and leisure, the less likely they
were to go to war. he illusory nature of such reasoning is underscored by François-
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Poncet’s metaphorical description of Franco-German relations, and his use of the motif of the
theater demonstrates how National Socialism’s sophisticated self-production prevailed over
historical reality by shaping French public policy and popular opinion. In short, the representation of politics had come to dominate politics itself.
By casting Hitler in the roles of both director and master of ceremonies, François-Poncet
relegates the French to the position of passive spectators, ready to be seduced by German
“bonbons” and entertainment. France had surrendered itself to artiice and distraction rather
than confronting the impending catastrophe—a nonresistance due in part to the fact that the
populace was still exhausted emotionally and politically from the battles of World War I. he
lingering memories of the trenches and casualties had given birth to a large paciist movement
that crossed party and class lines. he paciist mentality in France, however, soon deteriorated
into a precarious state of denial and defeatism. Along with the governments of other Western
powers, the French accepted the discourse of rapprochement surrounding such events as the
1936 Berlin Olympics and the 1937 exposition instead of actively countering the ominous
military maneuverings taking place in the wings. As the ambassador laments in his recollections, the German performances in support of world harmony would prove to be only an
intermission, designed to buy time for the Nazi war efort.
his study examines the most elaborate production of National Socialist political theater
during this period—the participation of the hird Reich at the 1937 Paris Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne—within the context of cultural
exchange and diplomacy during the interwar years. Ater World War I, France and Germany
attempted to establish a more stable entente between the two countries, eforts that reached
their height around the relationship of foreign ministers Aristide Briand and Gustav Stresemann in the late 1920s. When the Nazis came to power, in addition to launching their own
propaganda initiatives, they built upon the history and cultural infrastructure of the previous
decade, making use of veterans’ groups, youth movements, and organizations for the cultural
elite that had been previously established in the spirit of Franco-German rapprochement.
Nazi eforts to promote the illusion of a Franco-German friendship—and the corresponding
misguided optimism on the part of the French—reached their height during the 1937 Paris
Exposition. Germany’s pavilion, designed by Hitler’s chief architect Albert Speer, was granted
by the French organizers the most central location on the fairgrounds, across the Seine from
the Eifel Tower and facing the pavilion of the Soviet Union. he view of the three structures,
as seen from the steps of the Trocadéro, would become the most reproduced and the most
infamous image of the exposition (ig. 1). he German pavilion was by far the most costly
foreign structure at the fair, and the Nazi regime clearly recognized that the investment would
reap beneits. he 1937 exposition ended up attracting more than thirty-one million visitors,
and the pavilion, along with the extensive program of German cultural events organized for
the fair, proved to be an overall propagandistic success.
his study analyzes the construction of German identity for an international audience,
focusing speciically on the French reception of National Socialist culture and politics as represented at the fair. Since the German pavilion efectively provided French audiences with an
immediate, hands-on experience of the hird Reich on their own soil, it greatly inluenced
their formulation of an understanding of the new regime. In turn, French interpretations of
the pavilion and National Socialism inluenced their assessment of their own political system
and national culture.
French responses to the 1937 German pavilion were conditioned by the unstable and
charged climate of French domestic politics at the time of the fair. Léon Blum and the Popular
Front had just won the 1936 national elections by unifying around the issues of republicanism, class interest, and antifascism. Yet, once in oice, Blum’s government pursued a policy
of appeasement and nonaggression with regard to Germany. In the spirit of rapprochement,
the Popular Front, having inherited the planning of the 1937 exposition from the previous
administration, worked intensively at securing the participation of the hird Reich.
he Popular Front’s approach to the French portion of the fairgrounds also was marked by
ideological inconsistencies. Although the Popular Front government had not originated the
project, its leaders nevertheless perceived the Paris Exposition as a showcase for their populist
social and economic reforms. Blum and his allies, determined to link the Popular Front with
progress and modernity, commissioned modern architects and artists, including such igures
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Figure 1. German and
Soviet pavilions as
seen from the terrace
of the Trocadéro, Paris,
1937. Roger Viollet /Getty
Images.
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as Le Corbusier and Fernand Léger, to design and decorate numerous pavilions at the exposition. Other government oicials, however, rejected the cosmopolitanism of modern art and
sought the security of la France éternelle in a return to naturalism and pastoral subjects.2 hey
created a large regional section at the fair with provincial architecture and folklore festivals,
an enterprise that preigured the conservative values of the Vichy regime.
Despite the Popular Front’s high aspirations for the exposition, Léon Blum resigned one
month ater its oicial inauguration, a move that marked the beginning of the end for the
movement. Within the context of France’s continuing political turmoil, the layout of the fairgrounds was read symbolically by the French press. he Eifel Tower, as seen from the steps of
the Trocadéro, stood between the German and Soviet pavilions, serving as a kind of metaphor
for France’s political position in 1937. he nineteenth-century tower came to represent the
outdated republicanism and gridlocked parliamentary politics of French democracy, and it
contrasted sharply with the architectural manifestations of the newly invigorated totalitarian
states that framed it.3 he seemingly strong and uniied national cultures of the Soviet Union
and Nazi Germany led many French intellectuals to question what kind of modern “collective
identity” could be deined as intrinsically French within the competitive arena of new nationstates. What mass cultural strategies could the French develop to ensure their own political
viability?
his questioning of French identity was tied to signiicant shits in traditional alliances
and party demographics at both ends of the political spectrum. he transitional period from
mid-1936 to early 1937 marked the peak not only of the Popular Front movement but also of
French fascist activity.4 Membership rose dramatically in extreme-right organizations such as
François de La Rocque’s Croix de Feu and the new Parti populaire français (PPF, founded by
the former communist Jacques Doriot in 1936), while fascist and right-wing newspapers, including Gringoire and Candide, attracted more than twice as many subscribers as did their let
and extreme-let counterparts.5 he advancement of French fascist ideology during this period was fueled in the 1930s by intellectuals from both the Let and the Right, who converged
in their critiques of bourgeois parliamentary democracy and their desire for a political and
spiritual revolution. Labeled nonconformists, this heterogeneous group of mostly younger intellectuals was hardly marginal to French society. As Julian Jackson conirms, they “articulated
a malaise” that extended beyond the readerships of their journals, and many played leading
roles in French cultural life.6 Oten they had passed through the ranks of the communists, surrealists, radicals, and reform socialists, connecting them to the larger French vanguard as well
as the conservative cultural scene. Zeev Sternhell convincingly argues that their fascist vision
was not a philosophical import but had deep roots in French intellectual history stretching
from the Boulangist crisis of the 1880s to the establishment of Vichy.7
Before the outbreak of World War II, fascism maintained a communal, utopian dimension
that, fed by strong nationalist sentiment, was seen as a new means of collective revolt and rejuvenation, competitive with Marxism. French nonconformists voiced nostalgia for a preindustrial France and a romantic autochthonal culture, but they also called for the formation of a
political and social order that could match those of the totalitarian states. In turn, the creation
of an organic society demanded a new means of expression that could accommodate a mass
aesthetic. Although many French nonconformists were not pro-Hitler, many of them identiied in National Socialism cultural and political elements that they wanted to appropriate for
use in France. In particular, they admired National Socialism for having successfully produced
a national culture for the masses that fused an antimodern primitivism with technological
mediation—a productive tension exempliied by the Nazis’ strategic use of cinema.
he gradual dissolution of a dominant moderate or mainstream discourse in France allowed fascist ideology to permeate sectors of public opinion not considered speciically fascist
by historians today. Xenophobia and anti-Semitism, long-standing tendencies within French
culture, rose markedly during the 1930s in every sector of society and became more comfortably situated in a growing quasi-ethnic deinition of Frenchness.8 he Popular Front let in its
wake a radically altered political map, one largely shaped by a fear of communism. Communism, not fascism, was perceived to be the greatest threat to France, not only by those on the
Right but, surprisingly, also by individuals associated with the Let. By 1938, many Radicals
and Socialists who had at one time rallied behind the Popular Front were driven primarily by
anticommunist politics.9 herefore, although much of this study focuses on texts and imagery
that are explicitly fascist, it also explores the resonances between these cultural artifacts and
those written or created by cultural producers occupying other political and middle-of-theroad positions. An analysis of French reactions to the German pavilion and National Socialist
mass cultural production illuminates how certain aspects of fascist ideology achieved a dangerous normalcy in prewar France.
At the heart of this study is the relationship between politics, aesthetics, and spectacle
during this volatile period. Fascism has been described as the incursion of the aesthetic into
the realm of the sociopolitical. It ofered up the illusion of social revolution, creating a totalizing and organic image of national community, while in reality leaving property relations
intact. As Alice Kaplan notes, fascism appealed to French intellectuals and cultural producers because it seemed “to be about making life into art—a transformation that promise[d]
to give artists an enormous role.”10 Unlike communism, fascism ofered intellectuals a sense
of community and an audience, while preserving their status as an elite class within a racial
brotherhood.
Chapter 1 maps the history of Franco-German relations ater the Great War, from the
Briand-Stresemann era and early attempts to unite Europe to the Nazi exploitation of the
discourse of rapprochement. Of particular signiicance is the critical role that governmental
and independent cultural organizations played in the formation of diplomatic relations and
foreign policy during this period. his chapter also highlights the French paciist movement’s
tremendous inluence on the evolution of Franco-German relations. he French population’s
overwhelming desire for peace in the wake of World War I presented an extraordinary opportunity for the hird Reich. Once in power, Nazi leaders launched an extensive cultural and
psychological campaign that prepared the ground for their military victory in 1940.11 his
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propaganda campaign reached its apex in the extensive cultural activity surrounding the hird
Reich’s participation in the 1937 exposition.
Chapter 2 examines the negotiations that preceded Germany’s participation in the 1937
exposition in light of the economic and political agendas of the Popular Front government
and the hird Reich. It discusses speciically how the policy of rapprochement was relected
in the special treatment given to the Nazi organizers by the French government. he chapter
then analyzes the pavilion’s design in relation to what has been termed a strategy of “aesthetic
overproduction.” he German pavilion, or Deutsches Haus, served to cloak the tensions between National Socialist mythology and economic reality by submerging them in a mystifying web of rhetorical and artistic signiiers. Its iconography represented the hird Reich as
the counterforce against the dehumanizing power of capitalism and the spreading threat of
communism. Speer’s stoic facade appeared to stave of the aggressive onslaught of the proletariat couple crowning the Soviet pavilion that faced it, while the interior program featured
utopian images of nonalienated labor and leisure, rendered in the auratic media of oil paint,
mosaic, and stained glass. he juxtaposition of these stylistically regressive artworks with the
most advanced examples of German machinery enabled the regime to market itself as both a
technologically avant-garde nation and a people tied to their timeless, preindustrial roots.
he analysis of the pavilion is followed by a discussion of its French reception in chapter
3. Numerous French writers praised the German pavilion for being one of the only buildings
completed in time for the fair’s inauguration. In contrast, the French government’s failure to
inish constructing its portion of the fairgrounds was seen as an indicator of its inefectiveness
and obsolescence. he German pavilion was also lauded for the colossal beauty of its architecture, which was read as an expression of the country’s uniied political will. Meanwhile,
French reviewers claimed that its elegant interior—decorated with mosaics, stained glass, tapestries, and oil paintings—relected the “civilizing energies” of the Reich. he suppression of
Hitler’s image in the pavilion, combined with the expense and efort that the Germans put
into its construction, were regarded as proof of Germany’s peaceful intentions. In my analysis, the conditions surrounding the reception of the pavilion are then related to the lack of
critical studies produced in France concerning the aesthetics and cultural policies of the hird
Reich.
In addition to exhibits of Nazi art and technology, the German participation at the exposition involved an extensive cinema program. he fourth chapter analyzes these ilms within
the context of Franco-German coproductions, all of which by the 1930s were being produced
under the auspices of Nazi-controlled ilm companies. he German ilms shown in Paris at the
time of the fair were mostly love stories, musicals, historical dramas, and westerns—escapist
entertainment intended to appeal to large numbers of spectators both within Germany and
abroad. he Nazis were determined to create a cinema industry that would rival Hollywood,
and they emulated American ilm genres that had proven success rates with mass audiences. In
addition to this large roster of popular ilms, the Nazi organizers screened a select number of
ilms representing another category of Nazi cinema production, known as the Staatsautrags-
ilm (state-commissioned ilm). hese narrative ilms were supposed to exemplify a superior
class of production and served a diferent sort of propagandistic function; they were highly
subsidized by the regime and were based on storylines that exalted Nazi ideology. Two statecommissioned ilms in particular were highlighted by the hird Reich as showpieces for their
newly reorganized cinema industry: Der Herrscher (he Ruler), directed by Veit Harlan, and
Karl Ritter’s Patrioten (Patriots), Germany’s answer to Jean Renoir’s La grande illusion. Close
readings of these works in chapter 4 analyze how Nazi ilmmakers combined entertainment
with the propagation of Nazi sociopolitical ideals. French reviewers were impressed by the
high production values of these ilms and generally suspended political judgment of them in
order to extol their artistic merits.
Chapter 5 examines the French fascination with the aesthetic qualities of Nazi mass spectacle. he discussion focuses on French accounts of the annual party congress at Nuremberg
and on the reviews of Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous documentary of the 1934 rallies, Triumph
des Willens (Triumph of the Will), which premiered in France at the 1937 exposition. Many
French writers considered these choreographed political gatherings to be innovative artistic
expressions of the collective German will. he cinematic employment of mass ornament likewise functioned as a signiier for an avant-garde mode of ilmmaking. French fascist and nonconformist critics issued corresponding attacks on the Popular Front government for its lack
of national pageantry, which they equated with political impotence and conlicted national
identity. he study concludes with an analysis of the Popular Front’s fraught attempt to revive
the fête nationale as an art form on the occasion of the 1937 exposition.
he French response to the Nuremberg rallies and Riefenstahl’s cinematic interpretation
of them points then once more to François-Poncet’s use of the metaphor of theater, albeit
on a much grander scale. As one French cinema critic poignantly remarked when reviewing
newsreels depicting Nazi torchlight parades: “It is not our place to decide whether M. Hitler
is greater than Napoleon or Bismarck—as he himself claims—but he is certainly just as strong
as M. Cecil B. de Mille.”12 Generally, the French were more prepared to praise German cultural production aimed at the masses—colossal architecture, cinema, the political rally—than
to applaud their eforts in traditional artistic media. his critical division was expressed by
François-Poncet himself in a report to the French Foreign Ministry in April 1936: “Insofar as
one can speak of a National Socialist culture, it is more in the mass movements . . . that it inds
its creative inspiration. It therefore expresses itself above all in works destined for the masses.
his is why until now architecture has beneited the most under the new regime. However, it
remains to be seen whether National Socialism has created a climate favorable to the creation
of individual works, born from personalities of suicient strength.”13
While the French were willing to concede dominance to the Nazis in the realm of mass
culture, they faithfully guarded the reputation of France in the more individualistic pursuit
of painting. François-Poncet expressed this sentiment to Albert Speer at a dedication dinner
for the German pavilion. he ambassador stated that the French may have been “lagging”
in architecture, “but in painting you [the Germans] can learn from us.”14 Painting, however,
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proved to be a much weaker propaganda weapon in the battle of representations that preceded World War II.
As the epilogue to this study demonstrates, the cultural initiatives of the hird Reich
launched before the war and the Franco-German relationships that developed around them
laid the administrative and personal groundwork that would later allow the German forces
occupying France to operate with such eiciency. Many of the cultural and political igures
who promoted rapprochement through expanded cultural contact would emerge ater 1940
as prominent igures in the Vichy regime and collaborationist circles in Paris. hose engaged
in Vichy not only facilitated the implementation of German policy but also led a “national
revolution” embodying conservative and anti-Semitic doctrine in their own right. he illusory
discourse of rapprochement was thus taken to its perverse extreme in the unfounded belief
that voluntary collaboration with the Nazis and “self-puriication” would elevate France from
a mere territory of the hird Reich to an equal partner in the “new order.” When seen from
this historical vantage point, the Franco-German cultural ties of the 1930s can be considered
a form of collaboration avant la lettre.
It goes without saying that there were worthy French individuals who opposed Nazi Germany during the 1930s and later refused to accept the German occupation by joining the heroic eforts of the resistance, signing up with de Gaulle’s Free French, or choosing to leave the
country. By examining the continuities between Franco-German rapprochement eforts in
the 1930s and later collaboration with and “accommodation” of the hird Reich ater 1940,
the present study has no intention of denying the importance of this other history. Rather, my
hope is that the dark subject of this book will make us that much more cognizant and appreciative of how valiant those rare individuals were who broke from the overwhelming forces of
public opinion, fear, and prejudice in order to resist the brutal regime of the occupier.
The Cultural Politics of rapprochement
1
Paciism and the unattainable Peace
Jean Renoir’s classic ilm La grande illusion opened during the irst month of the
1937 Exposition internationale in Paris and proved to be the biggest box-oice hit of
the year.1 In the ilm, two French soldiers, the aristocratic Captain de Boëldieu and
Lieutenant Maréchal (the latter played by the charismatic Jean Gabin) are shot down
during a reconnaissance mission behind enemy lines in World War I. he man responsible for downing their plane is Captain von Raufenstein, commander of the local German squadron. he ilm depicts no military action; we see only Raufenstein
awaiting the arrival of the French oicers while a Viennese waltz plays on a gramophone in the background. In anticipation of company, Raufenstein orders one of
his men to mix up a celebratory champagne fruit punch. Boëldieu and Maréchal are
then brought to Raufenstein, who greets them in French, ofers them some punch,
and invites them to dine with his staf (ig. 2). Raufenstein and Boëldieu, both elite
career oicers, instantly bond along class lines, conversing about acquaintances in
common before the war. Maréchal chats with a German oicer, who speaks luent
French and coincidentally also worked as a mechanic in Lyon. he German oicer
ofers to cut Maréchal’s meat for him, as his arm was injured during his capture (ig.
3). he civility of the encounter leaves us confused as to whether these French men
are prisoners or merely houseguests.
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his ambiguity was, of course, deliberate on Renoir’s part—he later stated explicitly that
he wanted to avoid making the stereotypical war ilm of “crude heroism” that “never got out
of the mud.”2 hough the scenes that follow in a German POW camp deal with the struggles
of the imprisoned Frenchmen and allude to the bloody battles being waged elsewhere, the
ilm foregrounds the commonalities among men, their shared humanity, and the futility of
war. he Germans are consistently depicted as reluctant captors, just as fed up with the war as
are their French counterparts. For example, when Maréchal sits despondently in a detention
cell, a German guard, concerned that he has not eaten, waits patiently for Maréchal to inish
an angry outburst and then sits beside him on his bunk. he German searches his pockets
for something to help restore his spirits; he inds some cigarettes and a harmonica and leaves
them with Maréchal. Waiting outside the cell, the old soldier smiles upon hearing the Frenchman play a song. Asked by a fellow guard why Maréchal had shouted earlier, the German
answers, “Because the war is lasting too long.”
Such moments of German kindness toward French brethren occur throughout the drama:
between the aristocrats Raufenstein and Boëldieu, who share more with each other than with
their lower-class compatriots; and between Maréchal and Elsa, a German farmwoman who
ofers Maréchal shelter ater his escape and eventually becomes his lover (ig. 4). While ilm
historians have generally agreed that the principal theme of the ilm is paciist internationalism and human compassion overcoming the barriers of nation and language, it is interesting
that the ilm does not demonstrate such a closeness between any other nationalities—the Russians and British are kept quite apart from the emotional intensity of the Franco-German relationships. Indeed, one senses an antagonism on the part of the French prisoners toward their
English allies, as several ilm historians have noted.3 While the ilm’s intent may have been
to dispel the “grand illusion” of the glory of war and to advocate global peace, its emotional
focus, I would argue, is really the psychology of the Franco-German bond.4
Renoir’s interest in this story and his paciist beliefs were born of his own experiences as
a ighter with an air squadron in World War I.5 In his memoirs he recalls that “we set of to
hunt Germans as light-heartedly as if we had been hunting rabbits: such was the efect of the
war upon our minds that we took these shabby exploits for granted. he thought of them now
turns my stomach: it is perhaps because I took part in them that I so detest them.”6 Renoir’s
belief in the possibility of a Franco-German understanding became part of La grande illusion
on and of screen. His assistant director, Carl Koch, was a German citizen who had been an
artillery captain in the German army during World War I. Koch, Renoir hoped, would “check
the authenticity of the German scenes.”7 In the course of their relationship, the two men deduced that they had actually fought against each other in a speciic sector of the Rheims.
Renoir recalls: “So we had made war together. hese things form a bond. he fact that we
had been on opposite sides was the merest detail. Indeed, as I come to think of it, it was even
better—a further instance of my theory of the division of the world by horizontal frontiers,
and not into compartments enclosed in vertical frontiers.”8
Renoir’s paciist reaction to the Great War was shared in the 1930s by his fellow anciens
combattants, or war veterans. his was a large constituency, given that nearly half the men
in France had served in the war. hey embraced La grande illusion for its “authenticity,” and
representatives of their organizations volunteered to introduce the ilm at dozens of openings
across France.9 hese veterans’ groups, due to their sheer size and their members’ national
prominence as war heroes, would exert a strong inluence on government policies and on the
general mentality of interwar France. hey made up one-quarter of the electorate in the 1930s
(still a time when only men were allowed to vote), and a profound paciism would become
their deining characteristic. Indeed their repudiation of war was not diicult to understand:
more than 1.3 million soldiers were killed, the highest proportion being men under twenty.
In Verdun, one thousand soldiers had died per square meter.10 he carnage let behind around
600,000 widows and more than 750,000 orphans, who were taken on as wards of the state.11
oP P oS I T e
Figure 2. Lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin, right)
and Captain de Boëldieu (Pierre Fresnay) dine with
Captain von Rauffenstein (erich von Stroheim,
center right) after their capture. Film still from
Jean Renoir’s La grande illusion, 1937.
Figure 3. German oficer cutting meat on the plate
of Maréchal (Jean Gabin) for him. Film still from
Jean Renoir’s La grande illusion, 1937.
LeFT
Figure 4. Maréchal (Jean Gabin) with elsa (Dita
Parlo), the German farm woman who harbors
him after his escape. Film still from Jean Renoir’s
La grande illusion, 1937.
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he traumas of the returning wounded also served as a continuous reminder of the horrors of
war—dangling empty sleeves, glass eyes, and wheelchairs were everyday sights. Half of the 6.5
million who survived had been injured or gassed, including a million mutilés, who had lost a
limb, been blinded, or been disigured. Scores of others would sufer from other physical and
psychological problems.12
As the war had been fought mostly on French territory, the material damage to the land
was also enormous. Ten departments in the north and east had been ravaged, with railways,
roads, factories, and farms destroyed or badly damaged. More than one thousand towns and
villages had been razed and more than two thousand others virtually demolished: for example, of the 18,000 inhabitants of Soissons before the war, only 500 remained; Reims was let
with 17,000 out of 117,000 residents.13 At the outbreak of World War II, France was still
working on repairing the devastation from the previous conlict. he First World War had a
long-term demographic impact as well: by 1938, between the war casualties and falling birth
rates, France would end up with only half the normal number of nineteen- to twenty-oneyear-olds. his would lead to a severe lack of manpower as well as anxiety about the possibility
of enlisting suicient recruits if another war were to break out.14
he emotional and physical toll of the war shaped the collective mindset for the next two
decades: France was determined not to repeat the tragedy. In a period of extreme internal political conlict—civil war was considered a possibility, especially ater the outbreak in Spain—
paciism was oddly one of the few things shared by the Let and Right. On the Let, a distaste
for the French nationalism of the past was replaced with the utopian vision of an international
paciist movement. On the Right, advocates of a new “integral paciism” called for peace with
Hitler, for they perceived the real threat to be Soviet-allied communists and “warmongering” German refugees within France.15 Both sides contributed to the weakening of the French
state through their relentless attacks on the government and its parliamentary system in general. A cascade of inancial and political scandals further undermined public conidence in
their political leaders. he result was a perilous instability: between 1933 and 1939 France
witnessed the formation and collapse of fourteen diferent governments. he internal jockeying for power overrode any sustained consideration of how to handle external afairs in an
efective manner. Not even the Popular Front leaders questioned the belief that antifascism
and paciism could somehow be reconciled, though Blum did inally initiate a rearmament
program in 1936. When the Popular Front government fell, paciist sentiments throughout
the country became even more fervent.16
he French people’s desire to avoid war at any cost, combined with their disgust at their
own degenerate political state, created a strange logic of defeat. As Eugen Weber concludes in
he Hollow Years, his provocative study of France in the 1930s, “men of good will allied with
men of no will, blindly vindicating Nazi policies, rashly minimizing the Nazi menace, and
their vehement arguments conirmed the inertia, unease, and fear of their fellows.”17 On the
Right, this warped form of national protectionism, charged with a fervent anti-Semitism, was
encapsulated in the ot-quoted remark “Rather Hitler than Blum.” Yet such sentiments were
not limited to those on the Right. For example, Simone Weil, a well-known paciist and intellectual who was active in the worker strikes of 1936, wrote on several occasions that if forced
to make the choice, she would prefer German domination to a European war, even if it meant
the oppression of communists and Jews. In an article published in May 1938, she argued that
France should abandon Czechoslovakia to Nazi rule (as the Munich agreement would realize
a few months later) because it presented “limited injustice” and the least risk of a war. If the
Germans were to annex Czechoslovakia, she argued, “the Czechs could ban the Communist
party and exclude Jews . . . without losing anything of their national life.”18 She reiterated
similar sentiments concerning the possibility of a German victory over France. In the spring
of 1938 she wrote to Gaston Bergery, editor of La Flèche, that the occupation of France by the
Germans would be preferable to losing young Frenchmen in battle. She hypothesizes that in
this scenario, “no doubt the superiority of German armed forces would lead France to adopt
certain laws of exclusion, chiely against Communists and Jews—which is, in my eyes and
probably in the eyes of the majority of Frenchmen, nearly an indiferent matter in itself. One
can quite well conceive that nothing essential would be afected.”19
Philippe Burrin notes that hatred of the Germans “was not much in evidence, even absent.” Rather, the denigration of the boches was replaced during the period with a “soothing
germanophilia” and “the tendency to detect ‘merits’ in Nazism.” hough the French press
provided reliable information concerning the regime, it was not speciic about the danger it
posed. It thus alerted the public to German expansionism, but the society as a whole failed
to acknowledge the real threat to France. “While there seemed no reason to expect anything
good from Nazi Germany, neither did there appear to be grounds for expecting the worst.”20
Interestingly, this mix of paciism, denial, and confusion sparked a great interest in “the German experience” on the part of the French public. Burrin notes that Nazi Germany aroused
more interest among the French than the Weimar Republic ever had. Whereas in the 1920s
fewer than 30,000 French people visited Germany every year, more than 100,000 visited in
1936, with this number falling only slightly in 1937. University and school exchanges increased at a similar pace, as did meetings of veterans’ associations, youth groups, and FrancoGerman sporting events.21
It should not be surprising, then, that when the Munich accord was signed in September
1938, only a little more than a third of the French population opposed it.22 he agreement
between the governments of France, Germany, Italy, and Great Britain handed over the Sudetenland of Czechoslavakia to Hitler. Despite the fact that the treaty violated a previous
one between France and the Czechs, it nevertheless won massive support in the French Parliament.23 Denis Hollier has written that France’s paciism and “wishful thinking reached a
hallucinatory level” with the Munich accord.24 Hollier goes on to assert that the “most spectacular” form of France’s “acrobatic system of self-delusion” in the 1930s was the denial of
Nazi aggression. It is one of the goals of my study to determine how the French were able to
convince themselves “until the very last minute that indeed, nobody, Hitler included, wanted
war.”25
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France’s desire to believe that Germany wanted to avoid another world war explains to
a certain extent why Renoir’s La grande illusion struck such a chord with the French public in 1937. he ilm ofered them an alternative, kinder vision of their German neighbors.
his fantasy was facilitated by the temporal displacement of the ilm’s narrative. Renoir himself romanticized the type of ethics that had governed warmaking twenty years beforehand.
World War I, he asserted, had a moral code; it was almost a “gentleman’s war.”26 he ilm correspondingly ofers a sanitized version of warfare: the only violence we actually see is a reluctant Raufenstein shooting Boëldieu with a pistol ater repeated warnings to descend from a
watchtower (Boëldieu had climbed the tower in order to distract the German guards while his
compatriots escaped). Raufenstein later berates himself for fatally wounding his friend, asks
for his forgiveness, and explains that he had intended only to shoot his leg.
As admirable as the concept of a moral war might be, it is a complete fallacy. Renoir’s ilm
thus presents a strange hybrid of realism and fantasy. In interviews, Renoir emphasized the
importance of realism in the work, going so far as to have Jean Gabin wear the ilmmaker’s
own pilot’s tunic from the war.27 Yet at the same time he created a total dreamscape, a vision
of Franco-German relations that was politically inconceivable in the late 1930s. he “grand
illusion” of the ilm, one might argue, was not the futility of war but the futility of believing
that peace was possible at that moment. For in 1937 Hitler’s troops were already massing at
the border. he Germans had embarked on an extensive rearmament campaign, remilitarized
the Rhineland, and bombed Spain in support of General Francisco Franco’s forces. While we
can appreciate the noble intent of Renoir’s paciist message, it was out of sync with the political reality of its timemerely being passionately against war would in no way prevent another
one from taking place.28
With the invasion of Poland in September 1939, France and Britain were inally forced to
declare war on Germany. France did its best to avoid any real action, engaging only briely in
ighting in the Saarland. he country settled into a “phony war” through which it hoped that
victory could somehow be obtained through yet more diplomacy and without combat. In the
fall of that year, La grande illusion was banned by the military authorities for its paciism and
for promoting friendship with the enemy.29 Several other ilms considered to be antimilitaristic or demoralizing to the French public were censored as well. But these were futile gestures;
the opportunity for France to prepare adequately for war had passed. Some groups did continue their attacks on Hitler, notably members of the French Communist Party, though news
of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of August 1939 had thrown the party into total disarray. he
Comintern denounced the war as “imperialist,” leading those still loyal to Moscow to oppose
the French war efort (in the wake of the treaty, Edouard Daladier’s government would also
arrest thirty-ive communist deputies).30 Despite the eforts of others to mobilize the French
against the Nazis and the brief upswell of national unity under Daladier, the “paciist tornado”
that had struck the nation so profoundly before 1939 had already done its damage; the Nazis
had been allowed to win the upper hand in both military and psychological terms.31 he hird
Reich inally launched its ofensive on May 10 and required only six weeks to bring France to
its knees. he Germans entered Paris on June 14 and declared victory on June 26.
Franco-German relations in the Interwar Years
Hitler had recognized that France’s overwhelming desire for peace could be exploited to Germany’s advantage, especially since the former had already been weakened politically by a string
of successive governments and severe economic crises. Following his rise to power, Hitler and
his cohorts began laying the military and psychological groundwork for the victory that would
come in 1940. hey waged an intensive seven-year cultural campaign to convince the French
that Germany shared their desire for a lasting peace in Europe. he Nazis devoted signiicant
resources to this cultural enterprise because they understood its future dividends in military
terms: Germany could buy more time for its rearmament eforts and also ensure that France
would choose not to intervene in its expansionist plans eastward. heir investment paid of in
spades; their propaganda added greatly to France’s growing insecurity and defeatist mentality
when it actually came time to wage war.
he hird Reich did not invent the idea of a Franco-German entente—rather, it built on
the long history of rapprochement negotiations initiated in the 1920s following World War
I. While each country had had its own agenda and national interests in mind, these earlier
eforts at securing a lasting peace had been made in good faith and had resulted in several
signiicant treaties. Hitler never had any intention of upholding these treaties; his interest in
exploiting the discourse of peace was only an intermediary step toward the future domination
of France and the rest of Europe. Nevertheless, his leadership successfully appropriated the
language of this previous era, a language that still had currency with the French public. he
regime also employed the services of government agencies and Franco-German “friendship
groups” that had been founded during the 1920s to further rapprochement and created new
organizations devoted to their deception.
he success of the Nazi campaign is surprising when one considers how far from reality
the French needed to stray in order to believe German paciist propaganda. One might assume that a quick look at Hitler’s Mein Kampf would have encouraged some doubt on the
part of most French citizens. In this autobiographical manifesto, Hitler declared repeatedly
that France was Germany’s “inexorable mortal enemy” because it was determined to keep the
German nation fragmented and subordinate.32 His attitude toward France difered entirely
from his view of Italy and Great Britain, with which he anticipated seeking out alliances.
Hitler saw France not only as a military threat but as a racial one as well.33 He described the
French people as “negriied” due to their close association with the Jewish race and inance:
“Only in France does there exist today more than ever an inner unanimity between the intentions of the Jew-controlled stock exchange and the desires of the chauvinist-minded national
statesmen.” He concludes that the French collaboration with “the aims of Jewish world domi-
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nation” presented a grave threat not only to Germany but also to the “existence of the white
race in Europe.”34 To defeat the conspiracy, he calls for the resurgence of German military and
racial power and, as a irst step, advocates alliances with Italy and England in order to divide
Europe against France.
Hitler had written Mein Kampf during his imprisonment ater the failed Nazi putsch of
1923. Once in power, he radically changed his external discourse vis-à-vis France. In the foreign press, both Hitler and his propagandists dismissed his book’s anti-French passages as
outdated rhetoric of a previous era, all the while stoking the ires of animosity and xenophobia
at home. In 1933 in his irst interview with a French journalist, Fernand de Brinon, Hitler
downplayed the importance of his early book, stating that “a political leader proves himself
not through his words but through his behavior.” Hitler claimed to have evolved in the ten
years ater writing Mein Kampf from an angry “persecuted apostle” to a responsible statesman
striving with all his energy for a Franco-German entente.35
Indeed Hitler prohibited the translation of his text into French, recognizing that the vitrolic attacks on France would hinder his eforts to push for an entente. When unauthorized
French translations did appear, a French court ordered them destroyed. Only abridged versions were available aterward.36 Despite these acts of censorship, French newspapers hostile
to the regime did quote the anti-French passages, and knowledge of their existence became
more or less common.37 Hitler’s assurances of peace were also undermined by the publication of two secret directives issued by Joseph Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry in the French
newspaper Le Petit Parisien.38 Both documents demonstrated Germany’s continuing hostility
toward France, its plan to try to separate France from England, its rejection of any international limitations on armaments, and its aspiration to retake all territories whose population
included a signiicant German minority. he documents also revealed Germany’s intention to
use force ater successfully rearming but stipulated that the failure of peace should be blamed
on other nations for refusing to grant Germany’s “legitimate demands.” hey predicted that as
Germany rearmed, “hints of strength would decrease any willingness on the part of others to
take action against Germany.”39 Indeed, this statement was prescient, for neither France nor
England would attempt to interfere with Germany’s rearmament program, though its extent
was known by the French Foreign Ministry. France chose instead to listen to a diferent German voice, one that ofered the mirage of peace.40
Before the outbreak of war, Hitler conducted foreign afairs through several diferent ofices, which he deliberately set up in competition with one another. Hitler used this polycratic
organizational strategy in many other areas of government as well because it undermined
traditional codes of institutional conduct, leaving him as the supreme authority in the competing hierarchies.41 In external afairs, Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath, as head
of the traditional state oice of the Auswärtiges Amt, competed with party oicials Alfred
Rosenberg, head of the Außenpolitisches Amt (the foreign policy oice of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei [NSDAP—National Socialist German Workers’ Party]),
and Joachim von Ribbentrop, whose agency was also funded by the NSDAP and attached to
the party’s central oice.42 Although these leaders vied for control over the direction of German foreign policy in these formative years, political historian Christian Leitz conirms in
his recent study of Nazi foreign policy that Hitler was “undoubtedly the person responsible
for the Reich’s policy towards France.”43 Hitler never deviated from his belief that Germany
would eventually enter into military conlict with France, and in private he continued to express contempt for the hereditary enemy.44 At irst Hitler was concerned that France, which
potentially had the ability to overwhelm Germany militarily in the earlier part of the 1930s,
might initiate a preventative war to stop Germany’s rearmament. His concern did not dissuade him from pursuing his territorial aspirations and violating past treaties, but at the same
time, he realized that he needed the moderate tone of Germany’s conservative and largely
aristocratic diplomatic corps to appease the French and other world powers by maintaining
the mirage of peaceful intent.45 As a veteran diplomat of the Weimar years, Foreign Minister
Neurath had a proile that would prove enormously useful during the irst years of the Hitler
regime. His diplomatic voice ofered the illusion of continuity with the Revisionspolitik of the
previous decade, which sought to eradicate the injustices of the Versailles Treaty while creating diplomatic bridges to guarantee European peace. Hitler would use the “appearance of
continuity” to mask the real intentions behind reviving Germany’s military strength.46 Once
Neurath had done his part in buying the years needed to successfully prepare for war, Hitler
would replace him as foreign minister in 1938 with Ribbentrop, his loyal adviser on foreign
policy issues since 1932.47
To aid the overall diplomatic charade of rapprochement, the accompanying cultural campaign took on numerous forms: Franco-German student exchanges, youth movement conferences, war veteran reunions, art exhibits, academic symposia, joint mass rituals, publications, and retreats. hey involved some of the most notable leaders and intellectuals of the two
countries as well as ordinary citizens. his intense cultural propaganda produced a complex
and oten baling landscape of contradictions: aggressive military and political maneuvers
taking place on the one hand, and displays of brotherly love and artistic accomplishment being staged on the other. hough the hird Reich initiated much of the cultural contact and
many of the gestures of friendship between the two countries, the strength of paciist emotion
in France meant that the wave of rapprochement would gain a momentum of its own. Indeed,
one of the great ironies of the period is that several important pro-Nazi groups and events
created in the name of rapprochement would be funded not only by the German government
but also by the Quai d’Orsay, the French Foreign Ministry, and the French Ministries of Commerce and Education.
While some may dismiss the cultural contact between France and Germany as relatively
insigniicant in relation to the more serious world of politics, I would argue that the cultural
discourse signiicantly inluenced not only the general mass psychology of France but government foreign policy decisions as well. As the remarks of Ambassador François-Poncet
quoted in the introduction to this book demostrate, the atmosphere of cultural cooperation
gave French oicials hope that the policy of appeasing Hitler was working, that they would
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be able to steer France clear of any further devastation. Despite the repeated hostile actions
of the hird Reich—its withdrawal from the League of Nations, violations of the Versailles
Treaty, and racial persecution within its borders—France chose not to abandon its policy of
rapprochement until late in 1938 or early 1939, ater the Munich accord and the German
occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. Until this point, the French, along with their British
counterparts, somehow managed to believe that Hitler would make a commitment to “a lasting understanding” ater achieving domination of Eastern Europe.48 Even ater the invasion of
Poland, French leaders still thought that a second Munich-type accord might be conceivable.
It quickly became evident, however, that the endgame had inally materialized: the declaration of war was forced upon them.
Nonetheless, the Franco-German cultural initiatives begun in 1933 had helped keep the
fantasy aloat for nearly the entire decade. he 1937 exposition marked the peak of these
Franco-German rapprochement eforts—Germany’s participation at the fair was the most
extensive manifestation of cultural collaboration between the two nations and also marked
the height of French hopes that achieving peace was possible. Yet in order to fully understand
how the discourse of rapprochement developed in the 1930s, we must briely return to the
moment when a Franco-German rapprochement was irst initiated, in the early 1920s. During this time foreign ministers Aristide Briand and Gustav Stresemann embarked on a diplomatic campaign to bring France and Germany into a more stable entente. As I have already
mentioned, it was on the foundation of this history and its resulting Franco-German cultural
network that the Nazis built their own deceitful campaign.
The Briand-stresemann Era: rapprochement in the 1920s
hough France and its allies had defeated Germany in the Great War, few would argue that
the French had “won the peace.”49 In the years following the signing of the Versailles Treaty,
it became clear that the document represented no actual guarantee of security. Much of the
treaty had been gutted by a series of disappointing agreements with the United States and
Britain, and France was not convinced that its political alliances with the countries of Eastern
Europe would function as a real counterweight to Germany (particularly ater the signing of
the 1934 German-Polish pact). In the absence of any Anglo-American guarantee, and faced
with an economically resurgent Germany, the French government began to seek security
through more conciliatory, diplomatic negotiations with its former enemy.
his era in French diplomatic history was dominated by the eloquent politician Aristide Briand, foreign minister of France from 1925 to 1932. Briand believed that the only
way to truly contain Germany was to integrate it fully into the economic and political life
of the European community. He developed a productive working relationship with his German counterpart, Gustav Stresemann, who served as foreign minister from 1923 until his
death in 1929. hese two statesmen worked together on several agreements that would bring
the two countries into greater political and economic cooperation. Most signiicantly, the
Locarno Treaties of 1925 pledged their commitment, as well as the assurance of other European countries, to the national frontiers established by Versailles between France, Belgium,
and Germany; demilitarized the Rhineland; and brought Germany into the League of Nations. While real political and economic problems pertaining to reparations, disarmament,
and security remained unresolved, the public relations orchestrated by Briand and Stresemann to foster the “Locarno spirit” as well as the cordiality of their relationship nourished
the dream of a long-term rapprochement.50
Unfortunately, subsequent agreements did little to solve the most critical issues facing the
two countries. he 1928 Kellog-Briand Pact was representative of the era; signed by Briand,
Stresemann, U.S. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg, and delegates from several other countries,
the multilateral treaty declared a shared opposition to war but established no real political
provisions to make sure it was avoided.51 he drating of the Young Plan followed, which provided a schedule for the restructured payment of reparations and war debt and also secured
the complete withdrawal of Allied troops from the Rhineland. As one of the last gestures of
goodwill, Stresemann, just before his death in the fall of 1929, gave his support to Briand’s
proposal for Franco-German economic cooperation to evolve into a more expanded integration of a federal European Union.52
Plans for such a federal union, however, quickly fell by the wayside. Opposition to the
Young Plan for furthering the “enslavement of the German people” became a rallying cry for
the nationalist right in Germany.53 Heinrich Brüning’s government, formed in 1930, opposed
entirely the idea of a European union. hat same year, with nationalism on the rise, the NSDAP posted an enormous gain at the polls, becoming the second largest party in the Reichstag. At the 1932 Conference of Lausanne, with the German government now under Franz
von Papen, reparations were drastically reduced and replaced by a bond issuance. his last
payment was delayed for three years; ater Hitler’s rise to power the war debt was entirely
repudiated.54
new diplomatic Initiatives:
The Expansion of French and German Cultural organizations
During the Briand-Stresemann era, increased political contact between France and Germany
was paralleled by a signiicant increase in the cultural activity of their foreign ministries. By
this time, the French and German foreign ministries had come to understand the importance
of inluencing public opinion abroad through cultural and educational projects and had begun setting up oices for this purpose. Before World War I, for example, the French government established the oice of French Schools and Works Abroad (Bureau des écoles et des
oeuvres françaises à l’étranger) to promote the study of French language and culture and to
recruit teachers and professors in foreign countries.55 However, it was not until ater the war
that both ministries would rapidly expand the scope of their cultural propaganda with the
purpose of winning the publicity “battle” of peace. Each created new government agencies
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devoted to various cultural arenas, and they actively recruited professionals (artists, athletes,
professors, ilm directors, etc.) from outside the diplomatic corps to collaborate. In 1920, the
German Foreign Ministry founded the Department for Foreign Cultural Afairs (Abteilung
VI für Auswärtige Kulturangelegenheiten).56 Its mission was to oversee the proliferation of
German culture abroad and to maintain contact with ethnic Germans living in other countries. Along with another department established by the Wilmhelmstrasse named the War
Guilt Section (Schuldreferat), whose purpose was to convince the world of Germany’s innocence in the outbreak of World War I, it strove to build support for Germany and discredit
the Versailles Treaty.57
Simultaneously, in 1920, the French government established the Department of French
Works Abroad (Service des oeuvres françaises à l’étranger, SOFE) with the stated mission
of spreading “superior French civilisation to all parts of the globe” and to make “the genius
of France known, admired, and loved.”58 he organization was composed of numerous subgroups responsible for starting educational institutions, arranging academic exchanges, building French libraries, sponsoring art exhibits and performances, and promoting tourism. It
also took on such projects as establishing chairs in French literature at universities in Finland,
Poland, Bulgaria, and other countries. he importance placed on disseminating cultural capital abroad was clear in the annual expenditures: whereas the French budget devoted to these
endeavors was around 350,000 francs in 1900, by 1925 it was up to almost 28 million, and
by 1935 to nearly 67 million. According to ministry documents, the reason that spending
was being increased for cultural propaganda at a time when budgets for other government
departments (including the military) were being cut was fear concerning the rapid expansion
of German cultural activity abroad. As one deputy expressed bitterly: “German propaganda
. . . has resumed with the most feverish activity. . . . Although the Reich cannot ind a single
pfennig to spend on repairing the devastated regions of France that it destroyed, it is inding
millions and millions of marks . . . to preach the supremacy of its Kultur over all parts of the
world.”59
Other cultural agencies and branch oices abroad were also created in the 1920s. Most
notable was the Akademischer Austauschdienst, founded in Heidelberg in 1925 and renamed
the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) six years later.60 It was funded by the
Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Prussian Ministry for Education. he
DAAD’s mission was to promote the study of German culture and to fund student and scholarly educational exchanges, though its branches abroad would also become German cultural
centers in their own right. he Paris branch of the DAAD was opened in 1930, the same year
that the French government created the French Institute of Berlin (Institut français de Berlin). While the latter was clearly part of the French government’s image campaign abroad, it
primarily served to bring French scholars to Germany for study, including such intellectuals
as Raymond Aron and Jean-Paul Sartre. According to its director, Henri Jourdan, the institute
did not direct its programs toward a German audience but did “hold its ground” against growing anti-French hostility in the later 1930s.61
In contrast, the DAAD branch in Paris became a very active disseminator of Nazi propaganda to the French public following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. he Nazi regime replaced
the director of this oice with Karl Epting in 1934. Epting remained in this position until
1939, ater which he became director of the prominent Deutsches Institut (or Institut allemand) during the occupation from 1940 to 1944.62 Under his leadership, the Paris DAAD ofice, known as the Zweigstelle Paris, would expand its role beyond the organization of student
exchanges to become a comprehensive German cultural center. Epting started the Center for
Information and Documentation on the New Germany, which provided the French public
with an extensive library of Nazi books, newspapers, and magazines. He organized a lecture
series featuring both French and German intellectuals, as well as conferences on the “New
Germany,” which took place in Paris and in the French provinces. Epting also ofered musical
concerts and, beginning in 1936, German language courses. Epting was ambitious politically
and worked to move his Paris oice away from the DAAD organization (which was under the
auspices of the Reich Ministry for Science, Education, and Public Instruction) and closer to
the Auswärtiges Amt. He would regularly bypass the DAAD hierarchy entirely and address
his business directly to the ministry. Epting’s move to ally himself with a more signiicant
power base was prescient, for in October 1937, the Auswärtiges Amt declared that all German cultural organizations abroad had to report to the ministry by way of the embassies.63 His
strategy of bringing his oice closer to the seat of power in foreign afairs clearly paid of in
personal terms ater Ribbentrop became foreign minister, for Epting was later rewarded with
a prominent position in the occupying government.
otto abetz and the deutsch-Französische Gesellschaft
he transformation of previously existing cultural groups into Nazi propaganda services such
as the Zweigstelle Paris would become a priority for the Nazi Party once in power. he most
signiicant group to be reformed under the banner of Nazism was the Deutsch-Französische
Gesellschat (DFG), a committee consisting of French and German academic, political, and
religious igures dedicated to intellectual and artistic exchange. Unlike the DAAD, the DFG
had not originated in the 1920s as a government initiative but was organized by cultural
leaders interested in furthering a Franco-German rapprochement. Nevertheless, ater 1933
it functioned much like a government propaganda organization. Together with its French
counterpart, the Comité franco-allemand (CFA), the group worked hard to promote acceptance of National Socialism in France: it sponsored conferences on Franco-German topics,
hosted diplomats and intellectuals from both countries at elegant dinners, organized exhibits,
and published a monthly bilingual journal. Since its membership cut across the upper echelons of French political and cultural life, the inluence of the group was widespread and had
signiicant impact on the direction of French politics and public opinion. As Rita halmann
explains, the network of prestigious members of the DFG/CFA would later form “the Gotha
of the future collaboration.”64
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he DFG was founded in Berlin in 1926 by the well-known art historian Otto Grautof,
whose agenda very much relected the spirit of the Locarno era. Grautof and his colleagues
believed that by promoting cultural understanding between the peoples of France and Germany they could help establish an authentic peace in Europe. Among its three thousand
members were Albert Einstein, Otto Dix, homas Mann, André Gide, and Jules Romains, in
addition to numerous journalists, youth leaders, diplomats, and government oicials.65 he
DFG oten collaborated with the Comité d’études franco-allemand, also called the Comité
Mayrisch ater the Luxembourg industrialist who founded it. he DFG formed branches in
several other cities including Frankfurt, Stuttgart, and Vienna and was active until Hitler’s
seizure of power in 1933. Grautof at irst attempted to ind some way of continuing his work
under the hird Reich and tried to gain the Nazi Party’s favor by excluding those members
with “Jewish-sounding names” from the editorial board of the organization’s journal, the
Deutsch-Französische Rundschau.66 However, by July 1933, Grautof no longer felt secure in
Germany and led to Paris along with other prominent igures involved in the Locarno-era
rapprochement eforts.67 Once in France, with the help of Henri Focillon and others, he received one of the academic stipends created by the French government for émigrés.68 In July
1934, Grautof decided to dissolve the DFG in order to avoid its iniltration by pro-Nazi
forces.69
Shortly thereater, Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, asked Max Lingner, director of IG Farben, to reconstitute the group in accordance with Nazi guidelines, but Lingner failed to garner suicient support.70 It was not until Otto Abetz, a former art teacher with
signiicant contacts in France, spearheaded the reorganization of the DFG that a new proNazi group was successfully formed in 1935. Abetz was recruited for the job by Ribbentrop,
Hitler’s ambitious private adviser on foreign afairs, who had been rewarded with his own
agency, known as the Dienststelle Ribbentrop.71 Abetz was a particularly attractive candidate
to Ribbentrop because of his prior experience as cofounder of the Sohlberg Circle with Jean
Luchaire. Beginning in 1930, the Sohlberg Circle organized meetings that brought together
French and German youth groups to socialize and discuss various social and political issues.
Young people were drawn to these meetings by the promise of peace and by their desire to
distinguish their generation from that of Verdun, which had been responsible for so much
destruction. Ater 1933, Abetz continued to organize these youth meetings, though now he
worked in the service of the Hitler Youth.72 he French side continued to draw its members
from the youth movements associated with various groups including the Catholics, Radicals,
and Socialists. In 1934, Abetz and Bertrand de Jouvenel, the new French president of the
Sohlberg Circle, organized well-attended meetings in Berlin and Paris. Jouvenel was active in
the French youth movement and soon became a fervent Nazi sympathizer and editor-in-chief
of his own pro-fascist journal, L’Emancipation Nationale. Nazi oicials were pleased with the
results of these organized meetings, since important French delegates came away with positive
impressions of the new Reich. Among the participants at these meetings were journalists such
as Drieu La Rochelle, who would later write a series of favorable articles on Nazi Germany for
Marianne.73 he meetings also served as important networking venues where many pro-Nazi
French intellectuals and their German counterparts established contact for the irst time.
Abetz continued to organize these youth meetings through 1939 and made the most of
their propagandistic value, publishing reports and photographs in various journals. In the
journal of the DFG, the Cahiers Franco-Allemands / Deutsch-Französische Monatshete, which
Abetz coedited with Friedrich Bran, he included pictures of “camp de ski” meetings that took
place at German ski resorts in Bavaria. In these images, French and German youth engage in
rituals of rapprochement on the snowy slopes and stage impromptu skits over wine and cheese
(igs. 5–6). In the latter, one male student in drag—with long paper locks and a burlap sack
skirt—is accompanied by another playing the accordion, a standard cliché of French leisure
activity. Large Nazi and French lags serve as the backdrop for the performance, which takes
place in a cozy mountain cabin. he humor makes the comingling of youth, swastika, and
tricolore seem earnest and unthreatening.
22
Figure 5. French and German
members of the youth group
Jeune europe at a ski camp
in Bavaria during a week-long
meeting in the winter of 1938.
Deutsch-Französische
Monatshefte / Cahiers FrancoAllemands, January 1939.
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Figure 6. French and German youth put on a stage show during their joint ski trip in Bavaria during the winter of
1938. Deutsch-Französische Monatshefte / Cahiers Franco-Allemands, January 1939. Photo: Roger Schall, Paris.
In addition to the youth meetings, Abetz was responsible for a series of successful encounters between the older generations of French and German veterans from World War I. he
rapprochement between these groups was extremely important in tempering the political climate of the period. In France, the anciens combattants carried signiicant political clout as war
heroes; their national loyalty and patriotism could not be questioned. Hitler understood the
depth of their inluence, and Nazi oicials worked hard to win over this large constituency.74
To aid their efort, they appropriated the paciist slogans of the Let from the 1920s and used
them successfully in their campaign of “moral disarmament.”75
Abetz started by arranging for several representatives of the anciens combattants, including Jean Goy, a deputy and vice president of the Union nationale des combattants, to meet
with Hitler in 1934. Georges Scapini, a war veteran and deputy from Paris, also had a highly
publicized meeting with Hitler.76 Henri Pichot, president of the other large veterans’ organization, the Union française des combattants, traveled to Germany several times in 1934
and 1935 and spoke to a reunion of nearly 100,000 German veterans in Berlin. Ater this
point, meetings between the veterans’ groups escalated, with their relationship taking on a
life of its own—the Dienststelle Ribbentrop needed only to remain peripherally involved.77 In
1935, four thousand veterans from the two countries paraded together in Besançon, and two
thousand French veterans attended events in their honor in Stuttgart and Freiburg; in 1936
another large reunion took place to honor the twentieth anniversary of the Battle of Verdun
at the actual combat site. Torchlight marches and a solemn joint oath of peace marked the
culmination of the event.78
It was from the milieu of the war veterans that Abetz drew signiicant support in reforming the Comité franco-allemand. As he recounts in his memoirs, the anciens combattants were
well represented among the members of the CFA and also illed many of the leadership positions: Georges Scapini would become president; Henri Pichot and Jean Goy would serve as
secretary generals; Baron Achim von Arnim, a decorated war hero, would become president
of the DFG; and Hans Oberlindober, head of the German Association of War Veterans, was
vice president.79
he involvement of the war veterans gave the CFA an important air of respectability—
again because their patriotism could not be questioned nor could they be considered extremists by the general French population. he veterans were responsible for engaging high-proile
political leaders in the activities of the CFA and for expanding the scope of the organization
to engage a wider public. hey secured the collective membership of other large labor, artisanal, student, and women’s organizations and habituated the public to a schedule of frequent
concerts, receptions, and conferences.80 In other words, they made the presence of Nazi oficials and culture in France seem more normative. his was not an unintended result but a
deliberate strategy. he CFA managed its public relations closely. For example, Scapini chose
to decline Abetz’s ofer for CFA members to attend the 1936 Nuremberg rallies, because he
thought it might lead to damaging political speculations and would thus compromise their
“shared goals.”81 Signiicantly, the CFA also gained legitimacy by being funded by the Quai
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d’Orsay, which continued to subsidize the group until 1939. he Dienststelle Ribbentrop
funded the Cahiers Franco-Allemands / Deutsch-Französische Monatshete, the bilingual journal jointly produced by the DFG and CFA, which would continue to be published during the
occupation of France until 1944.82
In addition to his contacts with the veterans’ groups, Abetz cultivated signiicant friendships among Parisian intellectuals and journalists. His collaboration with Fernand de Brinon,
who would become vice president of the CFA, proved to be particularly fruitful. As mentioned above, de Brinon was the irst French journalist granted an interview with Hitler in
November 1933. In this interview, which was published in Le Matin, Hitler announced his
desire for an entente with France. Whereas past German leaders had failed to establish peace,
Hitler claimed he would succeed because he had the full support of the German people.83
Ribbentrop, whom de Brinon had met one year earlier, arranged the well-publicized interview
at the latter’s request, ater which de Brinon introduced Ribbentrop and Abetz to prominent
French politicians. Foreign Minister Louis Barthou met with Ribbentrop for the irst time in
the Paris residence of de Brinon in December 1933. De Brinon then arranged for Ribbentrop
to meet with Edouard Daladier in June 1934.
De Brinon’s eforts to bring together French and German politicians were in line with the
desires of France’s new foreign minister, Pierre Laval, who succeeded Barthou in October
1934 ater the latter was fatally wounded during the assassination of King Aleksandar I of Yugoslavia in Marseilles by a Croatian terrorist group. he appointment of Laval pleased Berlin
because he did not favor, as Barthou had, a French alliance with the Soviet Union, instead
preferring rapprochement with Germany. Laval was the one to actually sign the Franco-Soviet
pact because he could not renege on France’s previous commitments. Yet that same week he
also met with Ribbentrop at the Quai d’Orsay—a dialogue arranged by Abetz—and during
his term as foreign minister he would make no further eforts to improve relations with the
Soviets.84 Ater the French defeat, Laval became one of the principal leaders of Vichy, serving
as head of the French government from 1942 to 1944. De Brinon was also one of the most important French collaborators during the war, becoming ambassador of Vichy to the occupying
Nazi military authority (Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich, or MBF).85 Abetz was rewarded
with the position of ambassador to France in 1940 and became one of the principal advocates
for the “Aryanization” of France and the deportation of the Jews.86 (he activities of all these
men under occupation are discussed further in the epilogue to this study.)
he oicial inauguration of the DFG took place in the autumn of 1935 at the elegant
château Monbijou in Berlin under the auspices of Ambassador François-Poncet. Among its
honorary members were Ambassadors Noulens and Léon Noël; academicians Pierre Benoit,
Senator de Chambrun, the Germanist Henri Lichtenberger, Jules Romains, and the composer Florent Schmitt (of the Institut de France); and parliamentary representatives including
Henry Haye, Charles Pomaret, and Jean-Michel Renaitour. he organization would continue
to expand, with the CFA establishing branches in Lyon, Nice, Marseille, and Algier and the
DFG branching out to seven cities including Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Hamburg, and, in 1939,
Vienna.87 Although the DFG asserted that its primary purpose was to bring about a cultural
understanding and rapprochement between the two countries, it was composed largely of
Nazi sympathizers and thus worked toward gaining respectability and acceptance in France
for National Socialist doctrine.
While the contributors to its cultural projects came from diverse academic ields, one can
discern common threads in their arguments. Many of their ideas appear to be aligned more
with the ideological wing of the party, as deined by Alfred Rosenberg, than with the propaganda eminating from Goebbels at its political center. Rosenberg published in the DeutschFranzösische Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands, and his racist ideology, as articulated
in his inluential book Der Mythus des 20 Jahrhunderts (he Myth of the Twentieth Century,
1930), was cited in articles by other contributing authors.88 Many of the journal’s articles relected Rosenberg’s creed of blood and soil, championed the mythology of the German race,
viliied Jews and Bolsheviks, and rejected rootless cosmopolitanism in favor of national community. hese values may seem inconsistent with a group promoting international relations,
yet the DFG/CFA managed to rhetorically accommodate both imperatives. hey ofered
what might be termed a reactionary form of European identity politics, asserting that European peace depended upon acknowledgment of and respect for the diferences between nations. Prominent writers for the journal strongly rejected the cosmopolitanism of a European
Union, arguing that a people could learn to understand and respect the culture of another
only once they had reairmed their own cultural heritage and speciicity. Fritz Bran, editor
of the Deutsch-Französische Monatshete, described this return to blood and soil values as a
process of “internal nationalism,” a variant of patriotism, which was viewed favorably by his
ancien combattants readership.89 By framing Germany’s revitalized nationalism as a domestic
matter, the DFG made the hird Reich’s nationalistic fervor appear less threatening to its
neighbors.
he “German revolution” was also made more acceptable through comparisons to the
French Revolution of 1789. Germans’ high regard for the achievements of the French Revolution was frequently noted in articles defending Nazi actions. As the president of the BadenBaden DFG explained, “Germany is only now realizing what the French did centuries ago.”90
In 1939, when Franco-German relations were deteriorating quickly, the DFG devoted an entire issue to the two “revolutions,” which was timed to coincide with the 150th anniversary
of the storming of the Bastille. he issue compared and contrasted the ideologies of the two,
focusing on the rights of individuals and the interests of the community, the “safeguarding
of the race,” and the more intangible qualities of reason and intuition. hough diferences
between the two political revolts were noted, the overall purpose was to legitimize the Nazi
takeover of power by placing it symbolically in the same category as the French Revolution.
he issue included a photoessay devoted to the French 14 July celebration that presented accepted displays of nationalistic pride: crowds applauding French soldiers marching through
the Arc de Triomphe, Bastille Day irework displays lighting up the sky above the Cathedral
of Nôtre Dame.
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Edouard Herriot, president of the French Chamber of Deputies, produced the main article in this issue, “he Ideals of the French Revolution.”91 An article by Reich Minister Hans
Frank, “he Juristic Aspect of the German Revolution,” immediately followed the piece by
Herriot. Frank’s essay consists mainly of an anti-Semitic diatribe against the “disproportionate” power of the Jews in Germany. his was not unusual for the Cahiers; it published many
anti-Semitic articles justifying Nazi racial policy throughout its run in the 1930s.92 Frank’s
article describes in detail the grave threat posed by the Jews to the hird Reich, and the Nazi
desire to relocate them to “new territories.”93 hough Herriot’s article stresses the democratic
agenda of the French Revolution and notes the emancipation of the Jews in the course of his
discussion, the sheer presence of his name in the journal helped to legitimate the DFG’s intellectual stature and pro-Nazi position.
DFG members further defended Nazi policies by emphasizing that Germany was not a colonial power and, unlike France and England, was not imposing an imperialist form of authority on another culture. he fact that Germany continued to protest the seizure of its colonies
under the Versailles Treaty was conveniently omitted. Ater Hitler’s occupation of Czechoslovakia, their argument was modiied to accommodate the Reich’s new borders. Defending
these aggressive acts, the DFG explained that the Reich was not forcing itself as an imperialist
power on a sovereign nation but rather was liberating German nationals from an oppressive
regime. According to Friedrich Grimm in the September 1938 issue of the Cahiers, Germans
had lived as second-class citizens in Czechoslovakia; the Sudetenland region sufered the
highest unemployment rate in the country, its roads were let in disrepair, and German businesses were boycotted.94 he expansion of the Reich’s borders was, Grimm writes, good for
Europe; now that all Germans were united under one lag, they would be able to form a much
more stable core for a European peace.
DFG leaders also asserted that the future of world peace depended on a strong Germany
to ensure that a reliable system of checks and balances existed both ideologically and geopolitically. As one writer explained, German and Latin cultures were not contradictory but
complementary and should work together in a dialectical manner.95 Even at the end of the
decade, ater the hird Reich’s hostile actions against French interests, the two countries continued to be described in the Cahiers as being “united as brothers” or “married” and sharing a
“common destiny.”96 DFG members argued that France and Germany needed to collaborate
in order to keep the threat of communism at bay. Alfred Rosenberg clariied the strategy in
“he Spiritual and Political Situation,” which was featured as the opening article in the October/November 1937 issue of the Cahiers. Rosenberg contended that the Jews were leading
a worldwide Bolshevist revolution that threatened to “poison and destroy” Europe. According to his plan of defense, each European power would protect a speciic “zone of inluence.”
France would concentrate all its eforts on its African colonies to secure Europe against invasion from the south, while Germany would serve Europe by forming a barrier between the red
tide and Western Europe. Rosenberg concluded, however, that the hird Reich could succeed
in repelling communism only ater “all Germans were grouped together in one state.”97
he necessity of a rapprochement between France and Germany and the importance of
their bond for a greater Europe served as the main themes of the Cahiers until the declaration
of war. hough the articles in each issue covered a wide range of topics, including literature,
art, folksongs, and agricultural policy, they inevitably concluded with a call for Franco-German cooperation. Cultural exchange was put forth as the most efective means of achieving a
lasting peace between the two peoples. Intellectuals and artists were assigned the role of building cross-cultural understanding while maintaining respect for diferences. he importance
of sharing knowledge and culture across borders was literalized in a photograph included in
the January 1938 issue, which depicts the interlibrary loan oice of the National Library in
Berlin (ig. 7). Two large folios are placed conspicuously at the side of a librarian making
notations in a registry: one is labeled “International loan from German libraries to France,”
the other “International loan from French libraries to Germany.” It seems unlikely that such
vaguely worded labels would have any oicial function within the workings of a library; almost certainly they were fabricated to illustrate active intellectual commerce. Accompanying
this image are others depicting the facades of the French and German national libraries and
28
Figure 7. The interlibrary loan ofice of the
National Library in Berlin. Deutsch-Französische
Monatshefte / Cahiers Franco-Allemands,
January 1938.
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pictures of scholars at work in the respective reading rooms—literal “proof ” that the pursuit
of knowledge was alive and well in both countries despite reports of Nazi purges and suppression. he photographs were placed next to an article by Henri Lichtenberger on the vitality of
German cultural studies in French academia ater Hitler’s rise to power in 1933.
hese images of intellectual exchange constitute one of the many prominent photoessays
that were included in each issue of the Cahiers. hey were important in visually framing the
ideological underpinnings of the DFG’s version of cultural rapprochement. For the most part,
the photographs did not illustrate the articles but addressed their own subject matter (with
occasional exceptions, as noted above). Rarely did the journal publish documentary photographs of recent events or people in the news; it emphasized instead a range of simple and
iconic images that would best convey the “essential” character of each nation. he style of the
photos remains remarkably consistent throughout the 1930s: all the French images were shot
by Roger Schall of Paris, and the German images were taken by several diferent photographers, but they all conformed to the static quality preferred by the editors.98
Each issue of the Cahiers contained full-page, glossy black-and-white photographs organized around a general theme. he irst few were always images shot in Germany, followed
immediately by a second set of parallel images taken in France. he juxtapositions would
have prompted viewers to recognize the similarity between the two image sets/cultures. In
this manner, the photoessays reinforced the two-pronged, paradoxical message of the DFG:
French and German cultures were clearly separate and needed to be respected as such; these
cultures deeply resonated with each other and needed to recognize their mutual dependency. Simple captions introduced the themes, which for the most part focused on historic and
vernacular architecture and rural life: Gothic cathedrals in Braunschweig and Rouen, snowcapped mountains in Bavaria and Mont Blanc, French and German farmers in the ields. National identity is inscribed in the most seemingly benign terms, such as smiling peasant women
with baskets of grapes juxtaposed to idyllic landscapes suitable for any tourist brochure (igs.
8–10). All references to modern life in these rural-themed essays, including contemporary
farming methods of the period, were deliberately avoided. Instead, the DFG presented sober
images of horse-drawn plows, farmers with hand scythes, and leather-skinned artisans at work
(igs. 11 and 12). he stereotype of the noble peasant is employed to suggest that the two
countries were bound by a blood-and-soil ethic, by their mutual respect for the strength and
“mystery” of their agrarian roots.99
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Figure 10. Women in Provence in
Figure 8. Grape harvest in Germany. Deutsch-Französische
traditional costume, juxtaposed
Monatshefte / Cahiers Franco-Allemands, october/November
to a landscape image from the
1937. Photo: Hans Retlaff.
same region. Deutsch-Französische
Figure 9. Grape harvest in France. Deutsch-Französische
Monatshefte / Cahiers Franco-Alle-
Monatshefte / Cahiers Franco-Allemands, october/November
mands, october/November 1939.
1937. Photo: Roger Schall, Paris.
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Figure 11. A French woman
with a scythe from the photoessay “Peasant France.”
Deutsch-Französische
Monatshefte / Cahiers FrancoAllemands, october 1938.
Photo: Roger Schall, Paris.
Figure 12. Image of a German
shoemaker from the photoessay “Peasant Germany.”
Deutsch-Französische Monatshefte / Cahiers Franco-Allemands, october 1938. Photo:
Gisèle Mauritius.
his mythologized rural imagery is consistent with the völkisch cultural movement championed by Rosenberg’s Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (Combat League for German Culture).100 Yet a related set of cultural icons had also captured the French imagination at this
time. As Romy Golan convincingly documents, the visual arts in France underwent a deep
retrenchment during the interwar period, shiting away from the modernist avant-garde
and its corresponding machine aesthetic toward a more organic and pastoral construction
of French culture. Artists rejected urban imagery, choosing to depict landscapes, vernacular
architecture, and other regional motifs. In part this was yet another outcome of the anciens
combattants’ experience. Many prominent French artists had served in the war, and their return to landscape painting ater the end of the conlict functioned as a kind of antidote to the
mass destruction of the French countryside which they had witnessed. Landscape painting
in this context served as a “consoling momento mori.”101 Most of the paintings in this genre
were executed in a naturalistic style reminiscent of the conservative Beaux-Arts tradition—
a rather shocking aesthetic turn given that many of the painters of these works had only a
few years earlier considered themselves part of the avant-garde. he former Cubists Roger
de La Fresnaye and Auguste Herbin, as well as the former Fauves André Derain and Maurice
Vlaminck, became preoccupied with images of the French provinces.102 Derain’s Une ferme en
Provence of 1932 (ig. 13) is representative of the conventional earth tones and unadventurous
academic compositions that characterize most of these “return to the soil” works.
Emblematic depictions of French peasants were also common in interwar French painting. Pastoral scenes such as Roger Chapelin-Midy’s Le vin (Wine, ig. 14) romanticized the
agrarian lifestyle, eliminating any indication of the actual hardship and toil that marked it.103
Chapelin-Midy was a younger member of the group Painters of Poetic Reality, and his mural, painted for the Institut agronomique in Paris, takes on a particularly noble and timeless
quality with its classical handling of the igures’ poses and simple clothing. His ode to wine
shows its various stages of production, from harvesting to crushing, but the emphasis of the
composition is on the workers’ restrained enjoyment of their labor around a rustic table. his
scene of digniied repose is signiicantly distanced from the chateau, the residence of the real
beneiciaries of their toil, which in the painting is far away on a hill in the background.
he ideological impetus behind the popularity of such painted subjects was consistent with
the motives that drove the selection of photographic motifs in the Cahiers Franco-Allemands.
Figure 13. André Derain,
Une ferme en Provence,
ca. 1932. 45 × 63 cm.
Private collection. Courtesy of Stoppenbach &
Delestre Ltd., London.
Ater World War I, the French had gained a renewed admiration for the peasantry; they were
idealized for being enraciné, rooted in their native land and culture more than any other class
or group. hey were also viewed as the embodiment of moral superiority and strength, a reputation augmented by the well-known fact that France’s rural population had taken on a disproportionate share of the war. Not only did they lose more materially with the destruction
of villages and farmland, but they also sacriiced more human lives in the conlict. More than
40 percent of the soldiers killed in the war had come from a rural background.104 he allure of
agrarian imagery at this time of cultural retrenchment was sustained as well by the commonly
held assumption that peasants were the only true guardians of French tradition. Brittany in
particular exuded a powerful mystique as the most archaic and spiritual link to France’s past.
It is not surprising then that on several occasions the Cahiers included photographs of Breton
women in traditional headdress, in association with Brittany’s rugged countryside (ig. 15).
However, when one considers that France was undergoing a rural exodus at this time, the
embrace of the peasantry as moral compass and protector of French culture seems paradoxical
and tragic. he demographic loss was so great that by the early 1930s, for the irst time in the
nation’s history, the rural population no longer represented the majority.105
he paradigm shit in the visual arts away from urban and abstract forms toward rural and
nostalgic subjects was linked to a larger regionalist ideology that permeated both let- and
right-wing political circles. Both saw France’s cultural strength as inextricably linked to its rural roots. he Let in particular sought the support of the rural population in the 1930s, as this
constituency had traditionally allied with right-wing parties. As Golan points out, the Let’s
adoption of a regionalist discourse would ensure that the racial logic behind this celebration
of the national soil would remain partially masked “under a veneer of cultural pluralism, tolerance, and liberalism” until the founding of Vichy. he circulation of artworks embodying
these racist tropes during the 1930s allowed the values of Pétain’s Révolution Nationale to be
more readily absorbed ater 1940; the regionalist imagery already seemed familiar and benign
to the French public.106 It was also artwork of this genre that the French government, still
under the leadership of the Popular Front, chose to present to the German public in its 1937
exhibition of “French Contemporary Art,” held at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. his
exhibit, discussed at greater length in the third chapter, was organized by the French Foreign
Ministry’s Services of French Works in cooperation with the German government. hough it
was designated an exhibition of contemporary art, none of the included works were modernist in today’s sense of the word: there were no abstract pieces, nor any works associated with
the Cubist or Surrealist movement.
Another favored subject of Cahiers photoessays was the life of French and German youth.
For example, in the February 1938 issue, an article by Otto Abetz on “German Youth and
Happiness” was accompanied by images of young people in uniform and at play. In the segment of photographs from Germany, a band of Hitler Youth is depicted marching through
the mountains of Bavaria singing in unison. An image of the German Work Service on the
facing page depicts bare-chested members standing at attention in orderly rows, each with a
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Figure 14. Roger Chapelin-
Midy, Le vin (Wine, 1938).
Courtesy of Agro ParisTech /
Bibliothèques / Musée du
Vivant (Agro ParisTech /
Bibliothèques / Musée du
Vivant). Photograph by
Dominique Cornille.
Figure 15. Photo-spread
from Cahiers FrancoAllemands, June 1936, of
the Brittany coast and
Breton women in church.
Photo: Roger Schall, Paris.
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shovel in hand in place of a rile (ig. 16). he next spread of photographs depicts two German
girls, also in youth-group uniform, singing and playing the accordion; on the facing page is
an image of French children playing in the Jardin du Luxembourg (ig. 17). Two more photographs of French youth follow: one of young men in uniform brandishing swords and standing in formation in front of the Arc de Triomphe, adjacent to an image of a smiling French girl
picking tulips (ig. 18).
By juxtaposing militaristic photos to leisurely or pastoral images, the Cahiers attempted to
neutralize the more ominous associations of youth being prepared for war. his interpretation is supported by the argument proposed by Abetz in the accompanying essay. His piece is
actually the transcript of a lecture he had presented the previous month to the Parisian Rive
gauche society, a group that hosted many Nazi and French pro-Nazi speakers in the 1930s. In
Figure 16. Photo-spread of
Hitler Youth marching (left)
and the Nazi Work Service
(right), from the photoessay “German Youth,” Cahiers
Franco-Allemands, February
1938. Photo: Bildstelle der
Reichsjugendführung.
oPPoSITe
Figure 17. Photo-spread of German girls in uniform playing
the accordion and children at play in the Jardin du Luxembourg, from the photoessay “German Youth” and “French
Youth,” Cahiers Franco-Allemands, February 1938. Photo:
Bildstelle der Reichsjugendführung and Roger Schall, Paris.
Figure 18. French sword guard and French child picking
tulips, from the photoessay “French Youth,” Cahiers Franco-Allemands, February 1938. Photo: Roger Schall, Paris.
his talk, Abetz describes the Hitler Youth as a “pedagogical utopia” come to life. he Hitler
Youth, he claims, had rescued Germany’s young people from “boredom, isolation, and uncertainty” by ofering them the alternatives of “Patriotism, Race, Strength, and Loyalty.” he “reGermanization” of the race made it possible for the younger generation to experience a new
sense of belonging and community.
Abetz is quick to point out that the organization of eight million children and adolescents
was not under the authority of the army but independent and self-governing. Its leaders had
risen from among the ranks of its youth members. He also claims that the uniforms worn by
its members were not intended to be militaristic but rather served to “eliminate class distinctions.” Abetz goes on to contend that the Nazi celebration of the “heroic life” arose from an
“admiration for this attitude” and was not aimed at expanding the military. He clariies that
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“the word ‘soldier’ is the most used in our national vocabulary: soldiers of politics, soldiers of
work, soldiers of the future,” but asserts that these expressions are meant only “symbolically.”
According to Abetz, Germans employ the word soldier in the spirit of Nietzsche’s “aristocratic
ideal”—to evoke the values of courage, discipline, stoicism, and mastery over the senses.107
his public relations campaign to transform the Hitler Youth organization into a peaceable
Boy Scout troop would become an important propaganda tool in the course of Franco-German relations. Abetz would employ the youth group again on behalf of the CFA/DFG as
cultural emissaries to the 1937 exposition.
The Comité France-allemagne at the 1937 Expo
he 1937 Exposition internationale ofered the Comité France-Allemagne a tremendous opportunity to expand its public proile in Paris. As Otto Abetz noted in his memoirs some
years later, the Paris World’s Fair was “no less important for Franco-German relations than
the Olympic Games of 1936.”108 One of the highlights was the visit of ten thousand Hitler
Youth members and their leaders to the exposition during the fall of 1937. he sojourn began with a large reception hosted by the CFA, during which which the Hitler Youth leaders
invited one thousand children of French war veterans for a two-week paid trip to Germany
(this subsequent trip took place in early 1938).109 he leaders of the Hitler Youth also met
with Leo Lagrange, the Popular Front minister of sports and leisure, to discuss the success
of youth exchanges between the two countries. Further, they convened with various French
youth groups and representatives of the anciens combattants and let lowers at the Tomb of
the Unknown Soldier (ig. 19). While in Paris the Hitler Youth ofered several well-attended
Figure 19. Leaders of the
Hitler Youth accompanied
by other French and
German oficials at the
Tomb of the Unknown
Solder, Paris. L’Illustration,
4 September 1937, 8.
musical concerts, in which they performed traditional German folk songs as well as more
recent compositions of the “young nation.”110 he German Embassy then hosted a reciprocal
performance by a music group of the French scout organization. he newly created Hitler
Youth songs had been introduced previously in an article in the Cahiers, which was accompanied by an article by Henri Jourdan (of the French Institute of Berlin) on the genre of French
folk songs.111 he Cahiers included with each article the musical score and lyrics of one sample composition: a Hitler Youth song extolling the virtues of work and battle, followed by a
traditional song from the French Revolution. Again, the intent of the juxtaposition was to
normalize the culture of the Hitler Youth for the French readership by comparing it to their
own national folk traditions.
In order to maximize their participation at the exposition, the DFG/CFA formed an honorary committee in Berlin in early 1937 under the auspices of François-Poncet. he committee’s mission was to facilitate relations between French and German professional groups planning to participate in the fair.112 At the exposition, this committee hosted events regularly at
the rootop restaurant of the German pavilion, from which, Abetz recalls, invited guests could
admire the panorama of Paris.113 he DFG/CFA also organized a four-day Franco-German
conference that took place in June at the exposition. Conference sessions examined sociopolitical and cultural issues facing the two nations, and included presentations by the usual
suspects: Otto Abetz, Friedrich Grimm, Henri Lichtenberger, Abel Bonnard of the Académie
Française (later secretary of national education under Vichy), Senator Henry-Haye (mayor of
Versailles), and the anciens combattants Jean Goy and Henri Pichot, among others.
he talks covered political as well as cultural topics. A talk by Hans Friedrich Blunck, honorary president of the Reich Chamber of Literature, focused on the inluence of French thinkers on German literature and philosophy. Blunck linked these intellectual ties to the “fundamental consanguinity” of the two peoples.114 he session inspired conference participants to
found a literary committee whose goal was to promote the translation of recent German texts
into French and vice versa, as well to facilitate exchanges between writers, editors, and bookstores. A press committee was also created at the instigation of Fernand de Brinon during a
session with French and German journalists. his committee was dedicated to counteracting
what was termed “false and tendentious” news reporting against the hird Reich—a problem
that the group believed was not being adequately addressed by French oicials.115
he 1937 exposition conference gave rise to a second week-long meeting that took place in
Baden-Baden exactly one year later, in June 1938. Whereas the Paris conference had covered
both poltical and cultural topics, the DFG decided to address only French and German “cultural contributions” in Baden-Baden. his move was most likely a reaction to the increased
political tension between the two countries—much had changed in the months between the
Paris exposition and Baden-Baden. In March, Hitler had marched into Austria and soon aterward began demanding territorial concessions from Czechoslovakia while amassing troops on
its border. hough France was theoretically obliged to aid Czechoslovakia in the event of an
invasion according to the terms of their alliance, it became clear that Foreign Minister Bonnet
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had no intention of honoring the agreement. he desire to appease Hitler was shared by British premier Neville Chamberlain, who saw it as a means of avoiding war. In September 1938,
a few months ater the DFG conference, both Chamberlain and Prime Minister Daladier
would sign the fateful Munich accord, handing over the Sudetenland to Germany. Germany
would emerge from the Munich conference as the most powerful state in Europe.
Despite the clashes over Czechoslovakia at the time of the Baden-Baden conference, its
participants repeatedly alluded to Hitler’s desire for peace in Europe. he Führer’s speech
at the 1937 Nuremberg party congress was quoted at several points during the proceedings,
despite the fact that it was signiicantly out of date. Hitler’s praise for France and Germany’s
cultural reciprocity reinforced the theme of the confererence:
We have had many clashes with the French nation in the course of history. But we are nevertheless
in some ways part of the same grand family of European peoples. . . . We have not just caused each
other irritating problems and much sorrow but are also indebted to each other for a tremendous
cross-pollination. We have given each other many joys and much beauty. We must be fair to one
another; then we will discover that we have fewer reasons to hate one another than to admire
one another.116
he DFG organizers cited the tense political situation over Czechoslovakia as all the more
reason to attend the conference—the goal being to counter, with constructive cultural dialogue, the “irresponsible rumors” of an impending war. Many members, French and German,
also endorsed Hitler’s commitment to “rescue” the Germans of the Sudetenland from cultural
oppression.117
Most of the presentations were permeated with blood-and-soil ideology and anti-Semitic
statements. For example, Josef Nadler, professor at the University of Vienna, gave a talk on
the contemporary state of German literature in which he argued that Jewish Bolsheviks had
overrun German publishing. He maintains that by 1928 German literature was dominated
by translated Soviet tracts aimed at inciting a proletarian revolution. He discredits this supposed Marxist plot, noting that its Jewish instigators were in fact children of the decadent
bourgeoisie, and praises Nazism for having brought German art back to its racial roots with
writers such as Ernst Jünger and Dietrich Eckart. he New Germany, he concludes, “has been
founded on the historic union of the poet and the statesman.”118
Pierre Benoit of the Académie Française followed Nadler with a lecture on the inluence of
contemporary events in Germany on French literature and philosophy. He begins his discussion with the scholarship of Ernest Seillière of the Académie des Sciences, who had recently
completed a study on the work of Comte Arthur de Gobineau and “historic Aryanism.”119
his study was a popular one with the National Socialist audience, as Gobineau’s voluminous
Essay on the Inequality of the Races (Essai sur l’inégalité des races, 1853–55) had served as a base
for twentieth-century theories of racial hierarchies and the threat of “contamination.”120 Ater
summarizing the important inluence of German literature and philosophy on contemporary
French writers such as Maurice Barrès, “a friend of Germany,” Benoit concludes with two poems about soldiers in the Great War: one by Baldur von Schirach, head of the Hitler Youth,
and another by Jean-Marc Bernard, who was killed in action in 1915. Benoit’s inal remarks
assert that a certain number of French intellectuals were being inspired by the same eternal
values that were rejuvenating Nazi Germany.121
he most overtly racist argument was presented by Eugen Fischer, a geneticist at the University of Berlin. Fischer asserts that all aspects of political and social life should be based on
the laws of heredity. Germany, he maintains, has taken this important step by “introducing
racial legislation [the Nuremberg laws] to protect our people from the iniltration of foreign
races.” Echoing standard racist Nazi doctrine, Fischer explains that the “genius” and “spiritual
structure” of a nation depend on its “genetic health,” and he describes various scientiic studies
that support this position.122
Also among the speakers at the conference were a number of prominent cultural igures, including the architect Auguste Perret and the ilmmaker Leni Riefenstahl (ig. 20). Sacha Guitry, who had just released his polyglot ilm Les perles de la couronne (he Pearls of the Crown,
1937) was also scheduled to present with Jacqueline Delubac a report on theater and ilm in
France, but it seems that at the last minute he was not able to attend.123 Riefenstahl discussed
the making of her ilm on the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the aesthetic merits of the documentary versus the newsreel. Perret, who had designed the Museum of Public Works for the
1937 exposition, discussed the importance of classical principles in contemporary architecture.124 While none of their presentations were blatantly political, these French personalities
40
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41
Figure 20. Alphonse de
Châteaubriant (left),
otto Abetz (center), and
Leni Riefenstahl (right)
at the meeting of the
Deutsch-Französische
Gesellschaft / Comité
France-Allemagne,
Baden-Baden, June 1938.
Cahiers Franco-Allemands,
June 1938.
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nevertheless shared the stage with a group of unquestionably pro-Nazi representatives. he
line between “business as usual” and complicity is blurred here—does merely associating one’s
intellectual work and reputation with a political group aid in promoting its image and agenda?
his question is particularly charged when one considers the career of a man such as Perret
under Vichy: Perret would serve on the honorary committee for the infamous Arno Breker exhibit that took place in Paris in 1942.125 At best his involvement is illustrative of what Philippe
Burrin terms “accommodation”—a broad category covering a range of voluntary behaviors by
which people chose to adapt to the burdensome conditions of occupation rather than oppose
them. Acts of accommodation deined by Burrin as “opportunist” involved “going more than
halfway to meet the enemy and his policies: as when people entered into social relations with
him, chose to produce or work for him, to frequent his propaganda centers or learn his language, to adjust to the framework imposed by him, even though other choices were possible
and abstention involved no great sacriices.”126 Accommodation was much more widespread
than the more strictly deined politics of collaboration, though the fact that the government
sanctioned a policy of collaboration certainly ascribed legitimacy to these other more mundane but pervasive acts. In the end, the everyday decisions to accommodate made the job of
the occupier much less onerous.127
he Baden-Baden conference also involved the opening of two exhibitions organized by
the DFG/CFA: one of contemporary French and German books and another of art and regional crats entitled “Germany and France: Landscape and People” (“France et l’Allemagne:
L’homme et le paysage” / “Deutschland und Frankreich: Land und Leute,” igs. 21 and 22).
During the 1930s the DFG/CFA sponsored several exhibits; the one previous to BadenBaden had taken place in Marseille in 1937, and Edouard Daladier, then minister of national
defense, had served as its honorary president.128 he design of the Baden-Baden exhibits
42
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oPPoSITe
Figure 21. French section of the exhibit Germany
and France: Landscape and People, in BadenBaden, June 1938. Cahiers Franco-Allemands,
June 1938.
LeFT
Figure 22. German section of the exhibit Germany
and France: Landscape and People, in BadenBaden, June 1938. Cahiers Franco-Allemands,
June 1938.
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resembled the Cahiers photoessays but in three dimensions. he French and German sections
were divided, with each containing photodocumentation of regional architectural sites, ishermen, farmers, and other readily identiiable national subjects. he photographs were interspersed with artisanal crats, busts of important cultural igures, and historic paraphernalia.
he sections devoted to French and German art, not surprisingly, contained work executed
in a traditional, representational style—mostly landscape paintings and igurative sculpture.
Again, the visual displays were intended to convey the message that Germany and France
were separate nations whose peoples nevertheless remained spiritually connected: people and
landscape, blood and soil.
he organization of the Franco-German exhibit in Baden-Baden relected the importance
placed on visual culture exhibits during the 1930s to legitimize a potentially controversial
political discourse. he 1937 German pavilion occupied a similar critical position: to counter
negative press, it ofered the general public an opulent visual narrative of heroism, renewal,
and peaceful intent through artwork and other displays. In planning the pavilion exhibit, the
organizers drew upon the same discourse of rapprochement and blood-and-soil aesthetics
that the DFG/CFA and its sympathesizers had worked so hard to cultivate. Indeed, as I have
already pointed out, the German participation in the 1937 exposition represents the height
of the Nazi campaign for a Franco-German rapprochement, as well as the height of French
hopes that such a peace with their hereditary enemy could be achieved. As revealed in the next
chapter, the discourse of rapprochement would have tangible, material beneits for the hird
Reich, for it was supposedly in the spirit of cooperation that the French worked so hard to
accommodate the demands of the Nazi regime during the planning and construction of the
pavilion.
not es
he following abbreviations have been used in the notes:
AD.Archives Diplomatique de Nantes
AN.Archives Nationales, Paris
CNRS.Centre national de la recherche scientiique
MAE.Archives du Ministère des Afaires Etrangères, Paris
PA.Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Bonn
I n T r od u C T I on
1. André François-Poncet, Souvenirs d’une ambassade à Berlin: Septembre 1931–Octobre 1938
(Paris: Flammarion, 1946), 283. All translations in this book are my own unless otherwise noted.
2. Shanny Peer examines the importance of regionalism at the 1937 exposition in her article
“Peasants and Paris: Representations of Rural France in the 1937 International Exposition,” in
Identity Papers: Contested Nationhood in Twentieth-Century France, ed. Steve Ungar and Tom
Conley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 19–49. For a comprehensive examination of the conservative shit back to a pastoral and regional construction of French culture, see
Romy Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France between the Wars (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1995).
3. Alice Yaeger Kaplan notes these observations concerning the symbolism of the fairgrounds—what she refers to as “an ideological map of the 1930s”—in her study Reproductions of
Banality: Fascism, Literature, and French Intellectual Life (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1986), 127–28.
4. he surge of reactionary politics in 1937 was in part a direct response to the success of the
Let in the French election of May 1936. See Robert Soucy, French Fascism: he Second Wave,
1933–1939 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 314.
::
Notes
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5. he Croix de Feu comprised 450,000 members by mid-1936, when the Popular government banned
it along with two other extremist leagues. De la Rocque then founded the authoritarian-populist Parti
social français (PSF), which became the largest party in France (with membership between 700,000 and
1.2 million). Doriot’s PPF party probably peaked at 70,000 in 1937. In 1936, Gringoire reached a total of
640,000 subscribers, while Candide counted 460,000. One can compare these igures to the subscription
total for Vendredi, a periodical aligned with the Popular Front, which attracted about 100,000 regular readers. See Julian Jackson, he Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, 1934–38 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 250–54; and Jackson, France: he Dark Years, 1940–1944 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 78–79. See also Eugen Weber, he Hollow Years: France in the 1930s (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1994), 128. Weber cites an American study of French journalism of the period that reported the vast majority of the Parisian press being on the Right. According to the study, twelve publications of
the Right and extreme Right had 1.5 million subscriptions, as compared to six of the Let and extreme Let
with 700,000. he mass-circulating dailies were centrally situated, but most of these were “unfriendly to the
Let.”
6. Jackson, France: he Dark Years, 60.
7. Zeev Sternhell, Neither Right Nor Let: Fascist Ideology in France, trans. David Maisel (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1986). Sternhell examines the extent to which fascist ideology was embedded not only politically but also intellectually in French society. He traces the origins of French fascism to
the 1880s, linking it to such igures as Georges Sorel, Maurice Barrès, Charles Maurras, and Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon.
8. Philippe Burrin, France under the Germans: Collaboration and Compromise, trans. Janet Lloyd (New
York: New Press, 2006), 38.
9. Jackson, France: he Dark Years, 79–80.
10. Kaplan, Reproductions of Banality, 32.
11. he idea of a “psychological ofensive” launched by the hird Reich to distract the French from Germany’s military ambitions was laid out in Wilhelm Ritter von Schramm’s study Sprich vom Frieden, wenn
du den Krieg willst: Die psychologischen Ofensiven Hitlers gegen die Franzosen 1933 bis 1939; ein Bericht
(Mainz, Germany: V. Hase und Koehler, 1973).
12. Pierre Ogouz, “Actualité,” Pour Vous, 20 April 1937, 11.
13. André François-Poncet, report to the Ministère des afaires etrangères, 9 April 1936. AD Oeuvres
513.
14. Speer claims that François-Poncet made the remark during a conversation in which he suggested
that Speer exhibit his work in Paris in exchange for a show of modern French painting in Berlin (the latter did actually take place during the summer of 1937). See Albert Speer, Inside the hird Reich: Memoirs,
trans. Richard Winston and Clara Winston (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 81.
C Ha P T Er 1
1. he ilm was also favored by the French government of the time. In July 1937, La grande illusion was
chosen by the Ministry of National Education to represent France at the Venice ilm festival. See Olivier
Curchod, La grande illusion (Paris: Éditions Nathan, 1994), 17.
2. Jean Renoir, My Life and My Films, trans. Norman Denny (New York: Atheneum, 1974), 145.
3. Marc Ferro, “La grande illusion and Its Reception,” in Cinema and History, trans. Naomi Greene (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988). François Garçon argues that the anti-British sentiment evident
in La grande illusion was shared by many other French ilms produced during this period, all relecting the
diicult state of Franco-British relations at this time. François Garçon, De Blum à Petain: Cinéma et société
rançaise (1936–1944) (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1984), 136–37.
4. Marc Ferro goes so far as to say that the French POWs’ positive impressions of the Germans in the
ilm rehearse “before 1940 what the French were to say of the Germans during the irst months of the occupation.” Ferro, “La grande illusion,” 135. Garçon notes that the positive characterization of Germans
in Renoir’s ilm were present as well in other French ilms of this period, including Mademoiselle Docteur
(1936); see Garçon, De Blum à Pétain, 157–58.
5. André Bazin, Jean Renoir, trans. W. W. Halsey II and William H. Simon (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1973), 60.
6. Renoir, My Life and My Films, 150.
7. Ibid., 161.
8. Ibid.
9. Curchod, La grande illusion, 16.
10. Weber, Hollow Years, 15.
11. James F. McMillan, Twentieth-Century France: Politics and Society, 1898–1991, 2nd ed. (London:
Edward Arnold, 1992), 79–85.
12. Weber, Hollow Years, 11.
13. Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, 8; see also McMillan, Twentieth-Century France, 80.
14. McMillan, Twentieth-Century France, 79. See also Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, La Grande Guerre des
Français, 1914–1918 (Paris: Perrin, 1994), 418–48.
15. Weber, Hollow Years, 22.
16. In 1938, ater Chautemp’s Popular Front government fell and it became clear to Blum that Germany
would invade Czechoslovakia, he proposed a National Unity government to span all factions, let and
right. However, his idea had no chance of succeeding, as the parties were so divided by this point. Jackson,
France: he Dark Years, 89.
17. Weber, Hollow Years, 25.
18. Simone Weil, “A European War over Czechoslovakia?” Feuilles de la Quinzaine, no. 58 (May 25,
1938); reprinted in Simone Weil: Formative Writings, 1929–1941, trans. and ed. Dorothy McFarland and
Wilhelmina Van Ness (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987), 264–68. Cited also in Weber,
Hollow Years, 19n.
19. Quoted in Simone Pétrement, Simone Weil: A Life, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Pantheon, 1976), 327.
20. Burrin, France under the Germans, 41–42.
21. Ibid., 40, 42.
22. Weber, Hollow Years, 176.
23. Members voting in favor of the Munich agreement came to 537, and there were just 75 against
it—73 Communists and 2 others. Jackson, France: he Dark Years, 91.
24. Denis Hollier, “he Peace hat Never Came” (book review), Los Angeles Times, November 20,
1994, 11.
25. Ibid.
26. Jean Renoir, La grande illusion, trans. M. Alexandre and A. Sinclair (London: Lorrimer, 1968), 8.
27. Renoir, My Life and My Films, 160.
28. his is the basic point of Weber’s book he Hollow Years, as Hollier points out in his review. See
Hollier, “Peace hat Never Came,” 11.
29. Curchod, La grande illusion, 17.
30. Later, in February 1940, forty-four Communist deputies would be put on trial; most were sentenced
for up to ive years. Julian Jackson, France: he Dark Years, 115.
31. he term “paciist tornado” is used by Jean-Baptiste Duroselle in his book Politique étrangère de la
France: La décadence, 1932–1939 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1979). Quoted in Weber, Hollow Years,
23. Some scholars take issue with the perspective that France’s demoralization continued in 1939 and that
220
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221
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Notes
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defeat was inevitable. Julian Jackson argues that “there was a reassertion of national self-conidence under
Daladier, and the period between Munich and the Armistice was not a continuous slide from resignation
to defeat.” However, his account of events during that time period does not fully support his positionhis
historical narrative consists largely of misdirected anticommunist policy decisions, inadequate military
preparations, and a weak propaganda campaign to rally the French public and its political representatives
behind a war efort. Jackson, France: he Dark Years, 112–21.
32. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Milin, 1943), 619, 665,
666. Manheim’s translation is of the irst edition of Mein Kampf, published originally in two volumes in
1925 and 1927 respectively.
33. Christian Leitz, Nazi Foreign Policy, 1933–1941: he Road to Global War (London: Routledge,
2004), 33.
34. Hitler, Mein Kampf, 624.
35. Hitler’s interview with de Brinon is quoted in Klaus Hildebrand, “La politique française de Hitler
jusqu’en 1936,” in La France et l’Allemagne, 1932–1936 (Paris: Éditions du CNRS [Centre national de la
recherche scientiique], 1980), 362.
36. See Eugen Weber on the Paris commercial court decision in Hollow Years, 128. According to Rita
halmann, to further override the negative press of Mein Kampf, the Nazis commissioned Friedrich
Grimm, a key player in pro-Nazi Franco-German circles, to write Hitler et la France (Paris, Plon, 1938).
Rita halmann, “Du Cercle de Sohlberg au Comité France-Allemagne: Une évolution ambiguë de la coopération franco-allemande,” in Entre Locarno et Vichy: Les relations culturelles ranco-allemandes dans les
années 1930, ed. Hans Manfred Bock, Reinhart Meyer-Kalkus, and Michel Trebitsch (Paris: Éditions du
CNRS, 1993), 79n29.
37. Philippe Burrin conirms that even though most of the French public had not read Mein Kampf,
they were provided with good information about it. See Burrin, France under the Germans, 39.
38. Hitler’s interview with de Brinon appeared on November 22, 1933, and the secret documents were
published on November 16–17 and November 22. Gerhard L.Weinberg, he Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany: Democratic Revolution in Europe, 1933–1936 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 171.
39. Ibid., 172.
40. Weinberg notes that Germany “continued to rearm, covering the process by building up friendship
societies in France and Germany.” Ibid., 172–73.
41. Martin Broszat, he Hitler State: he Foundation and Development of the Internal Structure of the
hird Reich, trans. John W. Hiden (London: Longman, 1981), 193–240.
42. On the competition between the various leaders in foreign afairs as they vied for intelligence information, see Zachary Shore, What Hitler Knew: he Battle for Information in Nazi Foreign Policy (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003). he debate over how National Socialist foreign policy developed and who
shaped it is ongoing and the literature extensive. For a useful summary of past studies on the subject—
structural-functionalist, concept pluralist, and polycratic approaches—see Ian Kershaw, he Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, 4th ed. (London: Arnold, 2000), 134–60.
43. Leitz, Nazi Foreign Policy, 36.
44. Hilter asserted that Germany would never be able to cooperate with France, and at one point he
concluded that he would “naturally have to crush France.” Quoted in Robert Mühle, Frankreich und Hitler: Die ranzösische Deutschland- und Ausßenpolitik 1933–1935 (Paderborn, Germany: n.p., 1995). 48,
118n136, quoted in Leitz, Nazi Foreign Policy, 36–37. Weinberg similarly concludes that Hitler remained
hostile to France in formulating foreign policy: Hitler told Julius Gömbös of Hungary that he intended to
“crush France.” See Weinberg, Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany, 114. Drawing upon Goebbels’s diaries,
Kershaw also notes that Hitler believed that “France had to be smashed” in order to leave England without
a foothold on the European continent. According to Goebbels, Hitler regarded the “crushing of France as
‘an act of historical justice.’ ” Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936–45: Nemesis (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 293.
45. Franz Knipping, “La diplomatie allemande et la France, 1933–1936,” in La France et l’Allemagne,
1932–1936 (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1980), 217.
46. Ibid., 231.
47. Shore concludes that “as Hitler departed from more conservative revisionist aims and embarked on
radical policies, Neurath’s inluence steadily eroded.” However, Shore adds that Neurath’s fall can also be attributed to “his failure to maintain control over the information low to Hitler.” Shore, What Hitler Knew,
81. See also John Weitz, Joachim von Ribbentrop: Hitler’s Diplomat (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
1992), 144.
48. Peter Jackson, “Intelligence and the End of Appeasement,” in French Foreign and Defence Policy,
1918–1940: he Decline and Fall of a Great Power, ed. Robert Boyce (London: Routledge, 1998), 234.
In this article, Jackson argues that the French policy of appeasement lasted until ater the Munich accord,
when Prime Minister Edouard Daladier inally decided to counter the views of Foreign Minister Georges
Bonnet.
49. Hollier, “Peace hat Never Came,” 11.
50. J. Jacobsen, Locarno Diplomacy: Germany and the West, 1925–1929 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 68.
51. Ibid., 99.
52. Detlev J. K. Peukert, he Weimar Republic: he Crisis of Classical Modernity, trans. Richard Deveson
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1989), 200–201; and Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, 1840–
1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 640–49.
53. V. R. Berghahn, Modern Germany: Society, Economy, and Politics in the Twentieth Century, 2nd ed.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 95.
54. Holborn, History of Modern Germany, 696.
55. Paul Gordon Lauren, Diplomats and Bureaucrats: he First Institutional Responses to TwentiethCentury Diplomacy in France and Germany (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1976), 191.
56. Hans Manfred Bock, “Zwischen Locarno und Vichy: Die deutsch-französischen Kulturbeziehungen der dreißiger Jahre als Forschungsfeld,” in Entre Locarno et Vichy: Les relations culturelles rancoallemandes dans les années 1930, ed. Hans Manfred Bock, Reinhart Meyer-Kalkus, and Michel Trebitsch
(Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1993), 33.
57. Lauren, Diplomats and Bureaucrats, 200–203.
58. Ibid., 195.
59. MAE/Chambre, Rapport 802 (1920), 14; quoted in Lauren, Diplomats and Bureaucrats, 197.
60. Volkard Laitenberger, “Der DAAD von seinen Anfängen bis 1945,” in Spuren in die Zukunt: Der
Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst, 1925–2000 (Bonn: Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst,
2000), 21.
61. Bock, “Zwischen Locarno und Vichy,” 38. See also Henri Jourdan, “Souvenires d’un Français en
poste à Berlin de 1933 à 1939,” Mémoires de l’Académie de Sciences, Belles-Letrres et Arts de Lyon 29 (1975).
62. Béatrice Pellissier, “L’antenne parisienne du DAAD à travers les archives de l’Auswärtiges Amt de
Bonn jusqu’en 1939,” in Entre Locarno et Vichy: Les relations culturelles ranco-allemandes dans les années
1930, ed. Hans Manfred Bock, Reinhart Meyer-Kalkus, and Michel Trebitsch (Paris: Éditions du CNRS,
1993), 279.
63. Ibid., 280–84.
64. halmann, “Du Cercle de Sohlberg,” 82.
65. Barbara Unteutsch, Vom Sohlbergkreis zur Gruppe Collaboration: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der
deutsch-ranzösischen Beziehungen anhand der “Cahiers Franco-Allemands”/“Deutsch-Französische Monatshete,” 1931–1944 (Münster: Kleinheinrich, 1990), 40.
222
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Notes
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66. Ina Belitz, Bereundung mit dem Fremden: Die Deutsch-Französische Gesellschat in den deutsch-ranzösischen Kultur- und Gesellschatsbeziehungen der Locarno-Ära (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1997), 226–28.
67. Bock, “Zwischen Locarno und Vichy: Die deutsch-französischen Kulturbeziehungen der dreißiger
Jahre als Forschungsfeld,” in Entre Locarno et Vichy, 44.
68. Belitz, Bereundung mit dem Fremden, 228.
69. Alfred Kupferman, “Le Bureau Ribbentrop et les campagnes pour le rapprochement franco-allemand: 1934–1937.” In Les relations ranco-allemandes, 1933–1939 (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1976), 90.
70. Duroselle, Politique étrangère de la France, 206.
71. Broszat, Hitler State, 215–17.
72. Abetz had excellent Nazi credentials. He was awarded the rank of Unterbannführer in the Hitler
Youth in 1934, and in 1935 he became a member of the SS, later achieving the rank of brigadier general.
Rita halmann, La Mise au pas: Idéologie et stratégie sécuritaire dans la France occupée (Paris: Fayard, 1991),
37; Burrin, France under the Germans, 92.
73. halmann, “Du Cercle de Sohlberg au Comité France-Allemagne,” 74–76.
74. Antoine Prost, “Les anciens combattants français et l’Allemagne 1933–1938,” in La France et
l’Allemagne 1932–1936 (Paris: Éditions du CNRS,, 1980), 131–48.
75. Kupferman, “Bureau Ribbentrop,” 97.
76. Scapini was introduced to Abetz by Bertrand de Jouvenel. Jouvenel wrote to Scapini in 1934 on
Abetz’s behalf to request a meeting. In his note, Jouvenel praises his close friend Abetz as “having done
more than anyone in the world to promote the idea of rapprochement and peace among the German
youth.” Georges Scapini Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.
77. Kupferman, “Bureau Ribbentrop,” 95.
78. Duroselle, Politique étrangère de la France, 207. See also Otto Abetz, Histoire d’une politique rancoallemande 1930–1950: Mémoires d’un ambassadeur (Paris: Librairie Stock, 1953), 57–58. he oath was
published in the journal of the Deutsch-Französische Gesselschat, along with celebratory articles about
peace between the two countries being made possible by the war veteran Adolf Hitler. “Le Rassemblement
de Verdun” and “Le Serment des Anciens Combattants à Verdun,” Deutsch-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands, July 1936, 233–36.
79. Abetz, Histoire d’une politique ranco-allemande, 58–60. hough Pichot was a devoted member of
the CFA, he would become one of the few members to resign from the group ater the events of Kristallnacht changed his opinion of the Nazi regime. Jules Romains and Bertrand de Jouvenel also decided to
resign at this point, though Jouvenel’s desire for moral reform in France would lead him to continue to lirt
with collaboration and to keep up contacts with igures such as Abetz during the occupation. See Burrin,
France under the Germans, 55, 343.
80. Abetz, Histoire d’une politique ranco-allemande, 60–61.
81. Letter from Scapini to Abetz, 20 July 1936, Scapini Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford
University.
82. Unteutsch estimates that the Cahiers reached a circulation of two thousand by the late 1930s.
Unteutsch, Von Sohlbergkreis zur Gruppe Collaboration, 23. See also Kupferman, “Bureau Ribbentrop,”
96. Rita halmann states that the French government also funded the Cahiers but does not reference her
source; see halmann, “Du Cercle de Sohlberg au Comité France-Allemagne,” 83.
83. Kupferman, “Bureau Ribbentrop,” 92.
84. halmann, “Du Cercle de Sohlberg au Comité France-Allemagne,” 79.
85. Ater the war, both men were tried and executed.
86. Michael Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 6,
78, 222–23.
87. halmann, “Du Cercle de Sohlberg au Comité France-Allemagne,” 83; Unteutsch, Von Sohlbergkreis
zur Gruppe Collaboration, 129–30.
88. Alfred Rosenberg, “La situation spirituelle et politique,” Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers
Franco-Allemands 10–11 (October/November 1937): 313–22. See also references to his ideology and
writing in an essay by Martin Hieronimi, in which he compares the ideas of Rosenberg and Emmanuel
Mounier (“Der Personalismus, eine geistige Erneuerungsbewegung in Frankreich,” Deutsche-Französische
Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands 2 (February 1937): 58–60; and Pierre Gardère, “Le nouvel humanisme allemand,” in which Rosenberg’s Der Mythus des 20 Jahrhunderts is celebrated within the context
of an issue devoted to “Blut und Boden.” Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands 4
(April 1939): 250–54.
89. Bran’s argument is discussed in Michel Grunwald, “Le ‘couple France-Allemagne’ vu par les nazis:
L’idéologie du ‘rapprochement franco-allemand’ dans les Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers
Franco-Allemands (1934–1939),” in Entre Locarno et Vichy: Les relations culturelles ranco-allemandes dans
les années 1930, ed. Hans Manfred Bock, Reinhart Meyer-Kalkus, and Michel Trebitsch (Paris: Éditions du
CNRS, 1993), 134. Ater France’s defeat, Bran would assume an inluential position when Ribbentrop put
him in charge of propaganda directed at France. See Barbara Unteutsch, “Dr. Friedrich Bran—Mittler in
Abetz’ Schatten,” also in Entre Locarno et Vichy, 87–104.
90. Frhr. A. v. Dusch, “Discours d’ouverture,” Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands 7–8 ( July/August 1938): 245.
91. Edouard Herriot, “Die Ideale der französischen Revolution,” Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands, July 1939, 434–35.
92. hese anti-Semitic essays include Rosenberg, “Situation spirituelle et politique”; Alphonse de Chateaubriant, “Nouvelle Allemagne,” 3/4 (1937): 81–90; Josef Hadler, “L’inluence des grands événements
contemporains sur la littérature allemande,” 7–8 ( July-August 1938): 248–61; and Eugen Fischer, “Nouvelles recherches de la science allemande,” also in issue 7–8 ( July-August 1938): 294–307.
93. Hans Frank, “L’aspect juridique de la révolution allemande,” Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands, July 1939, 438–45.
94. Friedrich Grimm, “Le problème tchéco-allemand,” Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers
Franco-Allemands 9 (September 1938): 372.
95. Alfred Baeumler, “La dialectique de l’Europe,” Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers FrancoAllemands 2 (1934–35): 66; quoted in Grunwald, “Le ‘couple France-Allemagne’ vu par les Nazis,” 140.
96. Hans Eberhard Friedrich, “La France devant l’opinion publique allemande,” Deutsche-Französische
Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands 1 ( January 1938): 5. Achim von Arnim, “La leçon de BadenBaden,” Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands 7–8 ( July/August 1938): 350.
97. Rosenberg, “Situation spirituelle et politique,” 318.
98. he German photographers included E. O. Hoppe, A. Rupp, Hans Retzlaf, Paul Wolf, and H. von
Seggen.
99. his premise is repeated frequently in the Cahiers. For example, Alfred Rosenberg argues that “in
France, nationalism . . . is inseparable from the adoration of the soil. Whoever lives on the soil of France
become what is called French by the efect of a mysterious law.” Rosenberg, “Situation spirituelle et politique,” 319.
100. Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the hird Reich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1996), 28–38.
101. Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, 23.
102. Ibid., 1–5.
103. Ibid., 66.
104. McMillan, Twentieth-Century France, 79.
105. Golan, Modernityand& Nostalgia, 51.
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106. Ibid., xi. Indeed, the imagery appearing in many Vichy publications, such as Compagnons, the organ for Vichy’s youth movement, is virtually identical to that seen in the Cahiers. See Christian Faure, Le
projet culturel de Vichy: Folklore et revolution nationale, 1940–1944 (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon,
1989) 143, 179.
107. Otto Abetz, “La jeuness allemande et le bonheur” (transcript of his lecture “Die deutsche Jugend
und der Glücksbegrif,” Rive Gauche, Paris, 11 January 1938), Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers
Franco-Allemands 2 (February 1938): 59–69.
108. Abetz, Histoire d’une politique ranco-allemande, 67.
109. “Begegnungen/Contacts,” Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands, December 1937, 410.
110. Ibid., 412.
111. Henri Jourdan, “Das französische Volkslied,” Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers FrancoAllemands 6 (1936): 206–10; Wolfgang Stumme, “La chanson de la Jeunesse allemande,” same issue,
211–14.
112. Société Philanthropique de Berlin: Bulletin, March 1937, AD Berlin C 117. See also “Begegnungen/Contacts,” Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands 2 (February 1937): 76.
113. Abetz, Histoire d’une politique ranco-allemand, 67.
114. Hans Friedrich Blunck, “Les relations culturelles entre la France et l’Allemagne,” Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands 7–8 (1937): 233.
115. Walter Franke, “Les journées d’etudes franco-allemandes,” Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands 7–8 (1937): 222; and Gustave Bonvoisin, “Die deutsch-französische Studientagung,” same issue, 246.
116. Hitler quoted by Fernand de Brinon, “Discours de clôture,”Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands 7–8 (1938): 355.
117. See, for example, “Le IIe Congrès franco-allemands,” Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers
Franco-Allemands 7–8 (1938): 242–43.
118. Josef Nadler, “L’inluence des grands événements contemporains sur la littérature allemande,”
Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands 7–8 (1938): 261. Nearly all the talks presented at the conference were published in the Cahiers.
119. Pierre Benoit, “L’inluence des grands événements contemporains sur la littérature française,”
Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands 7–8 (1938): 263.
120. According to Gobineau, the purity of race alone decided the success of a culture, with the Aryan
race being the purest among contemporary lineages. Races “rose to power in their pure state and fell when
they had become contaminated.” George L. Mosse, he Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of
the hird Reich (New York: Schocken, 1981), 90. On the diferences between French and German racialist
thought and the role of Gobineau, see also Rosemarie Scullion, “Style, Subversion, Modernity: LouisFerdinand Céline’s Anti-Semitic Pamphlets,” in Fascism, Aesthetics, and Culture, ed. Richard J. Golsan (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1992), 184.
121. Benoit, “Inluence des grands événements,” 272.
122. Fischer, “Nouvelles recherches de la science allemande.”
123. Burrin, France under the Germans, 477n23. It appears that Guitry was replaced by Pierre de
Lestringuez. See “Le ilm et le theatre en France,” Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers FrancoAllemands 7–8 (1938): 291–93. Nevertheless, Guitry would continue to have a relationship with the group
and would publish an article in the Cahiers under occupation. His article, “Betrachtungen über die französische heater- und Filmkunst,” appeared in May 1942.
124. His lecture was subsequently published in the Cahiers. See Auguste Perret, “Principes
d’architecture,” Deutsche-Französische Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands 7–8 (1938): 281–87.
125. Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite 1940–1944 (Paris: Seuil, 1993), 95. Similarly, Guitry would go on to make numerous ilms under the occupation and was known to have socialized with
high-ranking German oicials, including Karl Epting and Hermann Göring. Under Vichy, he would be
named president of the “groupe des theaters au comité d’organisation des enterprises de spectacles.” Ater
the war, Guitry was indicted for collaborating with the enemy, but later these charges were dismissed—
evidently the court did not feel suiciently motivated to penalize him. See Michèle Cointet and Jean-Paul
Cointet, eds., Dictionnaire historique de la France sous l’occupation (Paris: Tallandier, 2000), 360–61; and
Alan Williams, Republic of Images: A History of French Filmmaking (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1992), 272–74.
126. Burrin, France under the Germans, 461. Burrin does an excellent job of distinguishing the various
forms and degrees of accommodation that occurred during the occupation. He contends that the irst form
of accommodation was determined by the need to have the economy and public services of France continue to operate. “Once an occupier seeks to exploit the economy for his own needs, choices for the least
of evils cannot be avoided, choices in which survival for the national community must be weighed against
assistance given to the enemy.” he second category takes accommodation further, betraying “a desire for
closer ties . . . providing, directly or indirectly, material or moral assistance for the occupier’s policies.” People engaged in “opportunist accommodation” were motivated by “a desire to defend or promote interests
of either a personal or corporative nature.” “he term opportunism does not mean that this pursuit of one’s
own interests was necessarily purely cynical or regardless of values. Although most of the accommodation
in this category may not have been primarily prompted by politico-ideological motives, these were oten
present in some limited or difuse form, establishing a connivance that rendered such gestures of cooperation all the easier to make.” he other form of deliberate accommodation was, broadly speaking, political.
“Political accommodation could range all the way from declared support for a policy of entente, through
sympathy for the occupier’s propaganda, to enrolling in his forces and wearing his uniform.” Burrin, France
under the Germans, 461–62.
127. Once again, as Burrin points out, accommodation was by far the most important factor from the
occupier’s point of view. “For at least three years the Germans managed both to maintain their domination
and to keep the yoke in place, despite cutting to the minimum the number of their troops assigned to maintaining order, and thereby making it possible to reinforce other fronts and also to exploit the economic
resources of France in a most efective way.” Ibid., 462.
128. “La Section Hanseatique de la Deutsch-Französische Gesellschat à la Foire de Marseille,” DeutscheFranzösische Monatshete / Cahiers Franco-Allemands 9 (1937): 307.
CHaP TEr 2
1. See Patricia A. Morton, Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931 Colonial
Exposition, Paris (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 52. Nancy Troy has argued that the 1900 exposition
was already marked by a strong competition between France and Germany, instilling in the French a feeling
of national insecurity with regard to their accomplishments in design and modern production methods.
he German neo-Baroque pavilion was illed with Jugenstil objects that demonstrated the superiority of
Germany’s cooperative workshops and its willingness to adapt to modern manufacturing practices. See
Nancy Troy, Modernism and the Decorative Arts in France: Art Nouveau to Le Corbusier (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1991), 47–51.
2. Richard Pommer, “Mies van der Rohe and the Political Ideology of the Modern Movement in Architecture,” in Mies van der Rohe: Critical Essays, edited by Franz Schulze (New York: Museum of Modern
Art, 1989), 128.
3. Gordon Dutter, “Doing Business with the Nazis: French Economic Relations with Germany under
the Popular Front,” Journal of Modern History 63, no. 2 (1991): 299.
226
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Notes
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4. he views of Yvon Delbos, French foreign minister in the Popular Front administration, regarding
trade with Germany are discussed by Hans-Jürgen Schröder, “Deutsche-Französische Wirtschatsbeziehungen 1936–1939,” in Deutschland und Frankreich 1936–1939, ed. Klaus Hildebrand et al. (Munich: Artemis, 1981), 391. he German ambassador to Paris, Graf von Welczeck, likewise conirmed the political
importance of the economic treaty. On the occasion of the signing of the Franco-German trade agreement
in July 1937, he stated: “hus we have laid the best possible foundation for improving and solidifying the
political relationship between Germany and France, thereby getting these two great neighboring countries
closer together, which is ater all what the French and German people want.” Quoted in ibid., 392.
5. Gordon Dutter, “French Foreign and Economic Relations under the Popular Front Governments,”
PhD diss., Department of History, University of Rochester, 1987; see also Dutter’s article “Doing Business
with the Nazis: French Economic Relations with Germany under the Popular Front,” Journal of Modern
History 63, no. 2 (1991): 296–326.
6. Raymond Poidevin, “Vers une relance des relations économiques franco-allemandes en 1938–1939,”
in Deutschland und Frankreich 1936–1939, ed. Klaus Hildebrand et al. (Munich: Artemis, 1981), 357.
7. R. J. Overy, Goering: he “Iron Man” (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 77–85; Bernice
Carroll, Design for Total War: Arms and Economics in the hird Reich (Paris: Mouton, 1968), 103, 129.
8. R. J. Overy, he Nazi Economic Recovery, 1932–1938, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), 23–35, 49, 63. Dutter notes that Germany’s desperate need for foreign exchange and raw materials for the rearmament program led to its subsidizing of German exporters. By dumping German products abroad, the Nazis hoped to procure the needed foreign credits. See Dutter, “Doing Business with the
Nazis,” 301–2. he tensions caused by the need to produce exportable goods and Hitler’s desire to increase
weapons production led to intense power struggles within the Nazi regime over military and economic
strategies. On the competition between diferent ministries, see Carroll, Design for Total War, 126–44.
9. Dutter, “Doing Business with the Nazis,” 300.
10. Duroselle, Politique étrangère de la France, 81–82.
11. Dutter, “French Foreign and Economic Relations,” 53. See also Jean Bouvier, “Contrôle des changes
et politique économique extérieure de la SFIO en 1936,” Relations Internationales 13 (1978): 111–15.
12. Hans-Erich Volkmann, “Außenhandel und Aufrüstung in Deutschland 1933–1939,” in Wirtschat
und Rüstung am Vorabend des Zweiten Weltkrieges, ed. Friedrich Forstmeier and Hans-Erich Volkmann
(Düsseldorf, 1975), 102, table; cited in Werner Herpell, “Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland in Paris,”
MA thesis, Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, 1988, 48. See also Dutter, “Doing Business with
the Nazis,” 304.
13. Private businesses formed their own organizations in an attempt to improve commercial relationships. In 1939, for example, the Association française d’intérêts français en Allemagne (AFIPA) was founded by representatives of Saint-Gobain, the Aciéries du Nord, and the Cointreau distilleries. See Poidevin,
“Vers une relance des relations,” 351–63.
14. Dutter, “Doing Business with the Nazis,” 297.
15. Schröder, “Deutsche-Französische Wirtschatsbeziehungen,” 388–98.
16. Dutter, “Doing Business with the Nazis,” 296, 306–7, 318.
17. Letter from German embassy in Paris to Ministère des Afaires Etrangères, 14 October 1936, PA
Paris 774d. he French government invited forty-nine foreign nations, and forty-seven responded airmatively. he hird Reich was one of the last nations to join the exposition. Its acceptance came a year and a
half later than those of Italy (accepted 25 March 1935) and the Soviet Union (30 April 1935); Belgium,
Great Britain, Egypt, Hungary, and Japan, among others, all accepted before the end of 1935. See F.-M.
Calmont, “Les participations étrangères,” La Flèche de Paris, 22 May 1937, 4.
18. he earliest mention of plans for a German pavilion was made in a letter of 4 April 1934 from the
German embassy in Paris to the Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin, PA Paris 774a.
19. See letters between Lammers, Neurath, and Schacht, 5 August 1935, 16 August 1935, and 22 August 1935, PA Paris 774a.
20. Letters of 22 August 1935, 30 September 1935, and 11 January 36, PA Paris 774a and 774b. On the
linkage of the Olympics and the exposition, see also the article “L’Allemagne ne participerait a l’Exposition
de 1937 que si la France est représentée à Berlin aux Jeux Olympiques.” Le Jour, 16 May 35.
21. Danilo Udovicki maintains that the placement of the foreign pavilions was determined in the course
of the third concours in the irst series of competitions for the design of the fairgrounds sponsored by the
exposition committee. See his essay “Projets et concours” in Cinquantenaire de l’Exposition Internationale
des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne (Paris: Institut Français d’Architecture / Paris-Musées, 1987),
58–61. he commissaire général of the 1937 exposition, Edmond Labbé, reported that this competition
occurred between 1 December and 31 December 1936. See Edmond Labbé, Exposition Internationale des
arts et techniques, Paris, 1937: Ministère du Commerce et de l’Industrie, Rapport général (Paris: Imprimerie
Nationale, 1940), 2:24. Although the arrangement of the sections étrangers was established in the earlier
stages of the fairground design, countries were not assigned speciic locations until later in the planning.
he plan directeur of 2 March 1936 indicates the inal placement of the Soviet and German pavilions. However, the site of the German pavilion at that time was divided as if to accommodate two separate buildings
(Labbé, Exposition Internationale, vol. 2, plate 14).
22. “Aufzeichnung: Beteiligung Deutschlands an der Internationalen Ausstellung Paris 1937,” from the
German embassy in Paris, 10 December 1937, PA Paris 775d.
23. “Aufzeichnung über die Notwendigkeit der Beteiligung Deutschlands an der Internationalen Ausstellung 1937 in Paris,” 20 May 1936, PA Paris 774b. French legislation at this time required goods to be
marked with their country of origin.
24. See Labbé, Exposition Internationale, 9:xvii, and the letter from Gesandtschatsrat von Campe of the
Reichskommissariat für die Internationale Ausstellung Paris 1937, to the Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin, 27 July
1936, PA Paris 774b.
25. SICAP (Société d’Importation de Charbon et Autres Produits) was a limited partnership directed
by the Compagnie Générale pour la Navigation du Rhin (CNGR). SICAP represented a combination of
private and state interests; the state provided the company with working capital, controlled one-third of the
stock, and accounted for one-third of its silent partners and administrators. he SICAP Accord was created in 1933 to provide a system whereby inancial credits from Germany exports of coal and coke would be
used to pay German debts to France. he company also handled the Franco-German exchange of coke for
iron ore. hrough this mechanism, Germany very nearly became the sole provider of coke to France. he
level of French iron exports to Germany also rose dramatically, resulting in the development of closer ties
between French and German industries. his occurred during a worldwide iron shortage, and therefore the
SICAP agreement worked against the interests of other European nations, which also wanted to trade coke
for French iron. See Dutter, “French Foreign and Economic Relations,”102–9. A book published in 1939
titled Une grande duperie, les échanges ranco-allemands (Paris) claimed that the arrangement made France
a virtual “colony” of Germany: France exported raw materials whereas it imported German manufactured
goods. Quoted in Jacques Marseilles, “Le commerce entre la France et l’Allemagne pendant les ‘années
1930,’ ” in La France et l’Allemagne, 1932 –1936 (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1980), 284.
26. Letters from 26 June, 9, 21, 27, 28, and 30 July, 1 September 1936; PA Paris 774c; and “Aufzeichnung . . . ,” PA Paris 774d. he goods ordered from Germany included steel, ceramic materials, rubber mats,
linoleum, electrical equipment, and scientiic instruments for physics, chemistry, and astronomy. Special
orders were also to be made for equipment for the exposition’s amusement park. See letter from Campe to
Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin, 28 July 1936, PA Paris 774c, and telegram from German embassy in Paris to Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin, 16 September 1936, PA Paris 774d.
27.A concentrated network of water, gas, and sewage systems beneath the pavilion made the building
228
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Notes
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of the pavilion’s foundation complicated and costly. In addition, the pavilion was situated directly on the
heavily traicked Avenue de Tokio. It was thus necessary to construct the pavilion on a platform 4.5 meters
above the street. Traic could travel freely through a tunnel under the pavilion. Labbé, Exposition Internationale, 9:13–14.
28. Shanny Peer, “Modern Representations of Tradition in the 1937 International Exposition: Regions,
Peasants, and Folklore,” PhD diss., New York University, 1992, 165. he French government ultimately
assumed about 60 percent of the total cost of regional participation.
29. Jean-François Pinchon, “La conception et l’organisation de l’exposition,” in Cinquantenaire
de l’Exposition Internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne (Paris: Institut Français
d’Architecture / Paris-Musées, 1987), 40. See also David B. Brownlee, Building the City Beautiful (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1989), 30–31; and André Lortie, “Détour par les Etats-Unis,” Les
Cahiers de la Recherche Architecturale 32–33 (1993): 13–24.
30. Letter from Gréber to von Campe, 31 August, 1936, PA Paris 774c.
31. Letter from Ambassador Welczeck to the Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin, 19 August 1936, PA Paris 774c.
32. Letter from Campe to the Auswärtiges Amt, 10 September 1936, PA Paris 774c.
33. Letter from Hasernöhr, oice of the Reichsminister für Volksauklärung und Propaganda to the
Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin, 5 September 1936, PA Paris 774c.
34. Letter from Gréber to Werner March, 24 September 1936, PA Paris 774d.
35. A report on these meetings appeared in Cahiers France-Allemagne 11 (1936): 398, along with an
article by Gréber titled “Quelques caractéristiques de l’Exposition internationale de Paris 1937,” 374–75.
36. Letter from the German embassy in Paris to the Ministère des Afaires Etrangères, 14 October 1936,
PA Paris 774d.
37. Telegram from the Auswärtiges Amt to German embassy in Paris, 13 October 1936, PA Paris 774d.
38. he French national economy had become stagnant as the country’s budget deicit and unemployment rate continued to rise. To counteract the light of capital and to stimulate investment and trade, the
French government implemented the irst of two devaluations of the franc in September 1936. Jackson,
Popular Front in France, 20, 168–69.
39. he comments of the French oicial La Baume were reported by Campe in a letter to the Auswärtiges Amt, 15 October 1936, PA Paris 774d.
40. Letter from La Baume to Campe, Auswärtiges Amt, 15 October 1936, PA Paris 774d.
41. Letter from Campe to the Auswärtiges Amt, 16 November 1936, PA Paris 774e.
42. Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la defaite, 1940–1944 (Paris: Seuil, 1993), 95.
43. Letter from Bonnefon-Craponne, director of Accords Commerciaux, Ministère du Commerce et de
l’Industrie, to German embassy, 18 November 1936, PA Paris 774e.
44. he terms of these deliberations and the statements by Gréber were reported in an unsigned memorandum from the German embassy in Paris, 7 December 1936. One would presume that this memorandum
was written by Campe, PA Paris 775a.
45. Unsigned memorandum (presumed by Campe) from the German embassy in Paris, 7 December
1936. PA Paris 775a.
46. “Mr. Gréber assured me that there was no question that those in charge of the exhibition would do
their best to facilitate our participation in it, especially since they are delighted with the extent and scope of
our contribution. Our participation has in addition acquired a great political importance for he has already
heard it said many times that the fact that Germany was participating with such a costly pavilion is the best
proof that it doesn’t want war[!].” Unsigned memorandum (presumed by Campe) from the German embassy in Paris, 7 December 1936. PA Paris 775a.
47. Labbé, Exposition Internationale, table in annex D, 2:81. he total cost of the German pavilion was
17,735,540 francs, or 329 francs per cubic meter.
48. he grandeur and highly organized nature of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games had elicited a similar
response from the French ambassador to Germany, André François-Poncet. he extensive eforts of the
Nazis, according to the ambassador’s memoirs, led to an abandonment of fear and to a renewed sense that
peace was possible. he Olympics produced the “sensation of détente”; all the world “was in ecstasy.” He
expressed comparable sentiments about the Exposition de la Chasse (Hunting Exhibit) organized by Goering: “In this atmosphere, as in that which had enveloped the Olympic Games, one could believe in a solidly
established peace, in war being bannished forever.” François-Poncet, Souvenirs d’une ambassade à Berlin,
262, 277–78.
49. Agreement signed by Labbé and Ruppel, 10 January 1936, AN F12 12534.
50. Pinchon, “Conception et l’organisation de l’exposition,” 38n10.
51. W. A. Berendsohn, “Der Tag der Expatriierten,” Das Neue Tagebuch (Paris-Amsterdam), 23 January
1937.
52. Quoted from a report written by Campe, PA Paris 775b. he document is dated 22 January 1937,
although it would have been impossible for his report to predate the newspaper article in question from 23
January.
53. Letter from Labbé to Campe, 2 February 1937, PA Paris 775b.
54. Letter from Labbé to Ruppel, 10 May 1937, AN F12 12358.
55. he German commission also wanted to build a special “canteen-boat” to be reserved for German
visitors, but its request was denied on account of the lack of available space. Letters from Ruppel to Labbé,
13 May 1937 and 21 May 1937, AN F12 12534.
56. Labbé, Exposition Internationale, 9:50.
57. Muller Oorth was commissioned by the German government to design the building and was later
awarded a Diplôme d’honneur by the French for his work. In order to cover the cost of the pavilion (30,000
RM), the German government invented yet another means of acquiring funds hors clearing. Twenty-eight
cars from the Ford factory in Cologne were delivered to the Ford plant in Asnières, upon which the countervalue in francs was given to the Nazis. See the letter from Campe to Lecuyer, director of Afaires Industrielles au Ministère du Commerce, 13 May 1937, PA Paris 775c.
58. For a discussion of the interest of the Paris Chamber of Commerce in expanding Franco-German
trade and its members’ positive impressions of Nazi Germany, see Dutter, “Doing Business with the Nazis,”
315.
59. he steel infrastructure of the pavilion had been completed by the beginning of March. About three
thousand tons of steel were used to build the infrastructure, and approximately the same weight of Jura
stone was needed to face the tower walls. One thousand train wagons were used to bring the construction
materials from Germany. Because the space around the pavilion was extremely limited, a separate warehouse fourteen kilometers away from the fairgrounds, in Pantin, was used to receive the arriving materials.
Trucks were then used to haul the goods to the pavilion site. During the course of the construction as many
as a thousand men at a time were working at the building site. Labbé, Exposition Internationale, 9:14; see
also the technical description of the pavilion’s infrastructure in “Formes 1937,” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui,
August 1937, 17.
60. he Popular Front government required that French companies be hired for a proportion of the
building work for the foreign pavilions. Many nations, however, employed French companies to construct
the entire pavilion for them. Some structures, as in the case of Mexico, remained incomplete for the duration of the exposition due to French labor unrest. he hird Reich, on the other hand, insisted on transporting German workers to Paris to build its pavilion. To comply with the terms of the exposition, the
Germans hired the French branch of Siemens, a German construction company, to complete the initial
foundation work. he existence of the Siemens branch in France thus ofered the Germans a useful means
of satisfying the French proviso, while still allowing them to celebrate the pavilion as a completely Ger-
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man achievement. See Jean-Marie Dubois, “Travail,” in Cinquantenaire de l’Exposition Internationale des
arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne (Paris: Institut Français d’Architecture / Paris-Musées, 1987),258;
also the letters dated 17 September 1936 from the Economics Ministry to the Auswärtiges Amt, and from
Campe to Sabath, and the memorandum from 21 September 1936, PA Paris 774d.
61. Kupferman, “Bureau Ribbentrop,” 98.
62. he French guests included National Economics Minister Charles Spinasse, Commerce Minister
Paul Bastid, Education Minister Jean Zay, Minister Camille Chautemps, Ambassador François-Poncet,
former ambassadors Chambrun and Noulens, Commissaire général Labbé, and Architecte-en-chef Gréber.
63. See for example the article “L’inauguration du pavillon de l’Allemagne: Une imposante manifestation,” L’Oeuvre, 27 May 1937, 2.
64. German translation by the Auswärtiges Amt of an article from the Estonian newspaper Uus Eesti
(11 June 1937), PA Paris 775c.
65. L’Oeuvre, 27 May 1937, 2; “L’Inauguration de la Maison allemande,” Le Temps, 27 May 1937; L’Echo
de Paris, 27 May 1937, 3.
66. Jackson, Popular Front in France, 199–201. See also Duroselle, Politique étrangère de la France,
299–301.
67. he power struggle between Schacht, Göring, and the Wehrmacht over economic policy and strategies for organizing a war economy led to Schacht’s resignation as economics minister in November 1937
(he remained president of the Reichsbank until 1939). Göring served as acting economics minister until
Walter Funk, formerly state secretary in the Ministry of Propaganda and Reichspressechef, assumed the position.
68. “Sprachregelung des Reichsministeriums für Volksauklärung und Propaganda,” 11 May 1937, 1. PA
Paris 775b. hese instructions somehow reached the French press. Writing in a newspaper sympathetic to
the Popular Front, the reporter André Pierre quoted the entirety of Goebbels’s memorandum. “Comment
les journalistes allemands doivent parler de l’Exposition de Paris,” L’Oeuvre, 17 July 1937.
69. “Sprachregelung des Reichsministeriums für Volksauklärung und Propaganda,” 11 May 1937, 1. PA
Paris 775b.
70. he earliest mention of plans for a pavilion was made in April 1934, more than eight months before
the oicial invitation was issued by the French government. In a letter to the Auswärtiges Amt, the German
embassy in Paris mentions a proposal for a circular “thermal palace” crowned with a 150-meter cupola, an
idea considered previously for the Chicago World’s Fair. For the Paris project, a professor from the Technische Hochschule in Berlin-Charlottenburg suggested drilling seven hundred meters deep to reach water
of 28 degrees Celsius. he German embassy at the time claimed that the City of Paris had an interest in the
project, with the possibility of making it a permanent institution ater the closing of the exposition. his
proposal was completely forgone in favor of a national pavilion. Letter from the German embassy in Paris
to the Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin, 4 April 1934, PA Paris 774a.
71. Speer, Inside the hird Reich, 81.
72. Speer was involved in several meetings in Paris during the second week of August; these also included Ministerialdirektor Ruppel, Baurat Bickel, Ministerialrat Freiherr von Mahs, and from the Propagandaministerium, Ministerialrat Karl Hanke, Ministerialrat Wilhelm Haegert, and Oberregierungsrat Fritz
Mahlo. Memoranda of 8 August and 11 August 1936, PA Paris 774c.
73. Letter of 20 August 1936 from Count Welczeck of the German embassy in Paris to Unterstaatssekretär Dieckhof, Auswärtiges Amt, PA Paris 774c.
74. By mid-July, however, only Belgium had actually begun to break ground. According to Gréber, the
plans of England, Russia, Switzerland, and Sweden had been submitted to the French commission but were
still under discussion. For Welczeck’s comments, see the letter of 9 July 1936 from the German embassy in
Paris to the Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin, PA Paris 774c.
75. Letter of 9 July 1936 from the German embassy in Paris to the Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin, PA Paris
774c.
76. In a letter of 1 September 1936 from Sabath of the Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin, to Ambassador Graf
von Welczeck (PA Paris 774c), Hitler stated that Germany would participate at the exposition if its exhibit
could take a “digniied form.” Speer’s plans had already been approved by the Reichswirtschatsministerium, but Speer insisted on waiting for the Führer’s inal decision before making any inal commitments.
77. Letter from Gréber to Labbé, 22 September 1936, AN F12 12534.
78. Letter from Campe to Auswärtiges Amt, 27 June 1936, PA Paris 774b; and contract addendum “Article 9” and ground plan from Gréber for the “Emplacement de l’Allemagne, 3200 m2,” PA Paris 774c.
79. German embassy in Paris memorandum from 28 September 1936, PA Paris 774d.
80. he reported dimensions of the German pavilion vary among the existing literature. Labbé’s report
listed the pavilion at 22 meters in width, 18 meters in height, and both 140 and 142 meters long (Exposition Internationale, 9:14, 18). In the oicial German catalog for the German pavilion, Robert Kain wrote
that the hall was 140 by 20 meters, and 15 meters in height. “he Interior of the German Pavilion,” in Internationale Ausstellung Paris 1937 für Kunst und Technik: Deutsche Abteilung (Berlin, 1937), 24 (hereater
referred to as Deutsche Abteilung). Wilhelm Lotz reported the pavilion hall was 142 meters long: “Das
Deutsche Haus am Ufer der Seine,” Die Kunst im deutschen Reich 10 (1937): 6. H. Kalpers reported in
1937 that the pavilion measured 140 × 22 × 18 meters. “Die Pariser Weltausstellung 1937,” Deutsche Technik 5 (1937): 336. Joachim Petsch, in his 1976 study, cited the same statistics as those reported by Kain:
Baukunst und Stadtplanung im Dritten Reich (Munich: Hanser, 1976), 180.
81. “Rapport concernant les conditions de la participation de l’Allemagne à l’Exposition internationale
de Paris 1937,” by Gréber, PA Paris 774d. his outline for a preliminary agreement was conirmed in a
meeting in Paris on 7 October between Gréber, Baurat Bickel, and representatives of the company SiemensFrance.
82. Alex Scobie, Hitler’s State Architecture: he Impact of Classical Antiquity (University Park: College
Art Association and Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990), 5–7.
83. As Speer would later write, “My architecture represented an intimidating display of power” (1978).
Quoted in ibid., 40. While Nazi state architecture was intended to intimidate enemies of the regime, it was
also supposed to play a role in psychologically preparing the German people for war, setting the ideological
stage for mobilization.
84. André Pierre, “Comment les journalists allemands doivent parler de l’Exposition de Paris,” L’Oeuvre,
17 July 1937.
85. Phillippe Rivoirard, “Le paciisme et la tour de la paix,” in Cinquantenaire de l’Exposition Internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne (Paris: Institut Français d’Architecture / Paris-Musées,
1987), 308–17.
86. Speer, Inside the hird Reich, 81.
87. “C’est encore eux qui se disputent!” Candide, 15 July 1937, 9.
88. Dawn Ades, “Paris 1937: Art and the Power of Nations,” in Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators, 1930–45 (London: Hayward Gallery, 1996), 62. Danilo Udovicki-Selb similarly evokes the Soviet
taste for the “New York skyscraper” in analyzing Iofan’s architecture in his unpublished essay “he Invention of the Oicial Avant-Garde: he Uses of Modernity in the Soviet and German Paris Pavilions of
1937” (1999).
89. he immense Soviet sculpture was created by Vera Mukhina, a former student of Antoine Bourdelle
at the Grande Chaumière in Paris. Jean-Louis Cohen, “U.R.S.S.,” in Cinquantenaire de l’Exposition Internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne (Paris: Institut Français d’Architecture / Paris-Musées,
1987), 186; and Sarah Wilson, “he Soviet Pavilion in Paris,” in Art of the Soviets: Painting, Sculpture, and
Architecture in a One-Party State, 1917–1992, ed. Matthew Cullerne Bown and Brandon Taylor (Man-
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chesterUK: Manchester University Press, 1993), 106.
90. Labbé, Exposition Internationale, 10:209.
91. he sculpture of the German eagle was created by Schmid-Ehmen. See ibid., 9:18.
92. Speer, Inside the hird Reich, 96.
93. Speer-Pläne, Bayerischen Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich.
94. he objectives behind the involvement of French architects in the building of the foreign pavilions
were to reduce the severe unemployment plaguing the French architectural profession during this period
and to assure some base level of architectural consistency to the fairgrounds overall. In the case of Germany,
it seems that these architects had little impact on the actual design of the pavilion. Rather, as outlined by
the French exposition committee, their purpose was mainly to facilitate the bureaucratic aspects of undertaking a building project in a foreign country. hey were responsible for guaranteeing structural soundness
and were also available to prepare documents, write oicial correspondence, manage the bookkeeping, and
oversee the worksite. Letter from the Germany embassy in Paris to the Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin, 30 July
1936, PA Paris 774c; and contract text, PA Paris 774c.
95. heir telegram read: “His Excellency the Führer und Reichskanzler / Upon leaving German soil the
French architects who collaborated on the planning of the German Pavillion at the Paris Exposition, and
who are very honored and moved by the welcome they received, request that his Excellency please accept
the expression of their profound gratitude and the assurance of their highest esteem. Courrèges, Condert,
de Jankowski, Hugonenq.” Transcript of telegram sent from Berlin, 2 October 1937, PA Paris 775d.
96. Albert Speer, Spandau: he Secret Diaries, trans. Richard Winston and Clara Winston (New York:
Macmillan, 1976), 3 December 1949 entry. Speer’s son has conirmed the likelihood that Gréber was
involved in the transmission of the Soviet plans to his father. See the correspondence between Werner Herpell and Albert Speer Jr. in Herpell, “Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland in Paris,” appendix, letter of
18 August 1988.
97. Lotz, “Deutsche Haus am Ufer der Seine,” 7.
98. Kathleen James-Chakraborty, German Architecture for a Mass Audience (London: Routledge,
2000), 2.
99. Wilhelm Lotz, “he German Pavilion,” in Deutsche Abteilung, 18–19.
100. Dieter Bartetzko and Hans-Werner Schmidt, catalog entry on Georg Kolbe in“Die Axt hat geblüht
. . .”: Europäische Konlikte der 30er Jahre in Erinnerung an die rühe Avantgarde, ed. Jürgen Harten, H.-W.
Schmidt, and Marie Luise Syring (Düsseldorf: Städtische Kunsthalle, 1987), 386–87.
101. Albert Speer dedication in Deutschland in Paris, 5 (original 1937 English translation).
102. Dieter Bartetzko, “Tödliches Lächeln—Der deutsche Ausstellungspavillon von Albert Speer,” in
“Die Axt hat geblüht . . . ,” ed. Harten, Schmidt, and Syring, 343.
103. he Egyptian monument is incorrectly identiied in the Berlin catalog as the Temple of Horus in
Edfu. he site depicted is actually the entrance wall to the step pyramid complex of King Djoser in Sakkara (ca. 2700 BC), whose reconstruction was begun in the 1920s. My thanks to Jan Assmann and Louise
Hitchcock for clarifying this matter.
104. Barbara Miller-Lane, review of Albert Speer’s Inside the hird Reich: Memoirs, Journal of the Society
of Architectural Historians 32, no. 4 (December 1973): 344.
105. Other models of recently built “monuments to the Führer” were also exhibited in the irst section
of the interior hall. hey included the new German Autobahnen or highways (notably the bridge over the
Neckar at Mannheim, the Mangfall bridge at Holzkirchen in Upper Bavaria, and the Waschmuhltal bridge
at Kaiserslautern in the Rhineland); the Adolf-Hitler-Platz designed by Hermann Giesler in Weimar; and a
model of a beach resort built on the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea by the Nazi organization Krat durch
Freude (Strength through Joy).
106. “Rapport concernant les conditions de la participation de l’Allemagne à l’Exposition Internationale
de Paris 1937,” undated [October 1936], PA Paris 774d. Christian Megret discussed the plans to rebuild
the tower in Nuremberg in the article “Sur les chantiers de l’Exposition: Les Allemands du Pont d’Iéna,”
Candide, 21 January 1937. Robert Taylor claims that the Nazi government intended to rebuild the entire
pavilion in Munich as a theater museum but cites no evidence to support his point. See he Word in Stone:
he Role of Architecture in the National Socialist Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974),
149.
107. Lotz, “German Pavilion,” in Deutsche Abteilung, 14.
108. Jefrey T. Schnapp, “Epic Demonstrations: Fascist Modernity and the 1932 Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution,” in Fascism, Aesthetics, and Culture, ed. Richard J. Golsan (Hanover, NH: University Press
of New England, 1992), 3. Schnapp’s article analyzes speciically an Italian Fascist exhibit that difered
substantially in form and context from that of the Nazis in Paris. I have modiied his term “aesthetic overproduction” to denote the static fusion of styles in the creation of pastiche, whereas Schnapp applied it to
the dynamic collage of visual efects featured in the Italian “multimedia museum in motion.”
109. Benjamin Buchloh has argued that a return to traditional and classical modes of pictorial production during periods of political oppression was a recurring cultural-political paradigm throughout the
twentieth century. he insistence on recognizable and iconic visual codes serves to deny “the dynamic lux
of social life and history.” See his article “Figures of Authority, Cyphers of Regression: Notes on the Return
of Representation in European Painting,” in Modernism and Modernity: he Vancouver Conference Papers,
ed. B. Buchloh et al., 81–115 (Halifax, Canada: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1983).
110. Numerous studies of National Socialism employ the idea of “reactionary modernism” to explain its
contradictory relationship to modernism and technology. While the regime denigrated the corrosive effects of modernization, it relied on modern mass-communication technologies and industrial structures to
socially engineer its alternative vision of national community. One of the most comprehensive texts on this
subject is Peter Reichel, Der schöne Schein des Dritten Reiches: Faszination und Gewalt des Faschismus (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1991). Reichel maintains that the aestheticization of politics under the Nazis, its
“seductive surface,” should be understood within the broader authoritarian scheme of the modern culture
industry. Reichel also makes explicit the roots of Nazi culture in “bourgeois normality,” while emphasizing
how Nazism reconciled seemingly opposite categories in constructing a uniied and harmonious identity.
Its dualistic identity incorporated bourgeois aspirations and cultural tastes along with the spiritual protest
against it, and wedded traditionalism with technological modernity.
111. Lotz, “German Pavilion,” in Deutsche Abteilung, 16.
112. Werner Sombart, quoted in Jefrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics
in Weimar and the hird Reich (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 143.
113. Kain, “Interior of the German Pavilion,” in Deutsche Abteilung, 23–27.
114. Ferndinand Fried, quoted in Herf, Reactionary Modernism, 207.
115. Ferdinand Tönnies deined these two “normal” types of social groups in his 1887 study Gemeinschat und Gesellschat. His original study did not exhibit the racist tendencies that later were associated
with the usage of these terms. See the English edition edited by Jose Harris, Community and Civil Society
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
116. Assistant Reichskommissar Maiwald, “German Economic Life at the Paris International Exhibition of 1937,” in Deutsche Abteilung, 38.
117. Louis Pelletier, “A l’Exposition: L’homme transparent,” Marianne, 7 July 1937, 8.
118. Ute Brüning, “Bauhäusler zwischen Propaganda und Wirtschatswerbung,” in Bauhaus-Moderne
im Nationalsozialismus: Zwischen Anbiederung und Verfolgung, ed. Winfried Nerdinger (Munich: PrestelVerlag, 1993), 29. he Glass Man was recently featured in a traveling exhibit organized by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” which traced the history of Nazi
race science and eugenics. he German Hygiene Museum in Dresden served as the venue for the exhibit in
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2006.
119. Herf, Reactionary Modernism, 13, 37.
120. Goebbels, quoted in ibid., 196. See also 207–9.
121. Adolf Ziegler, “he Fine Arts in Germany,” in Deutsche Abteilung, 46–47.
122. Ibid., 47–50.
123. Jonathan Petropoulos, he Faustian Bargain: he Art World in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000), 255–59.
124. For an overview of Nazi action against the modern art community, see Stephanie Barron’s essay
“1937 Modern Art and Politics in Prewar Germany,” in the catalog “Degenerate Art”: he Fate of the AvantGarde in Nazi Germany, ed. Stephanie Barron (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum, 1991), 9–23.
See also Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the hird Reich, 56.
125. Ziegler, “Fine Arts in Germany,” in Deutsche Abteilung, 48–50.
126. Anson Rabinbach, “he Aesthetics of Production in the hird Reich,” Journal of Contemporary
History 11, no. 4 (October 1976): 55.
127. Other prominent cultural igures under the hird Reich, including Arno Breker, Franz Radziwill,
and possibly Adolph Ziegler, also had earlier ties to Neue Sachlichkeit. See Petropoulos, Faustian Bargain,
256.
128. Rabinbach, “Aesthetics of Production in the hird Reich,” 55–62.
129. Ruppel, “Germany’s Participation in the Paris International Exhibitions of 1937,” in Deutsche
Abteilung, 5.
130. Ziegler, “Fine Arts in Germany,” in Deutsche Abteilung, 55.
131. he outdoor scenes were captured by an “iconoscope” camera mounted on the pavilion roof. he
setup was based on a system installed in Berlin in 1936, where programs and performances such as the
Olympic Games were broadcast. he transmissions were viewed collectively, free of charge, in public “television rooms” in Berlin and its suburbs. he television-telephone service at the pavilion was modeled on
the one built by the Nazis in 1936 between Berlin and Leipzig. Television Show by the Deutsche Reichspost
at the International Exposition, Paris, 1937.
132. Gisèle Freund, “La photographie à l’Exposition,” Art et Métiers Graphiques, no. 62 (1937): 38.
133. Ibid., 38, 41.
134. For example, photographs and photomontage were employed at the 1934 “Deutsches Volk—
Deutsche Arbeit” exhibition in Berlin and at the 1936 “Deutschland” exhibition.
135. Udovicki-Selb, “Invention of the Oicial Avant-Garde.”
136. Herf, Reactionary Modernism, 204–6.
137. his painting was awarded a gold medal by the jury of the 1937 exposition. Mortimer Davidson,
Kunst in Deutschland 1933–1945, vol. 2/2 (Tübingen: Grabert Verlag, 1991), 379.
138. Herf, Reactionary Modernism, 215.
139. Ziegler, “Fine Arts in Germany,” in Deutsche Abteilung, 47.
140. he Mangfall Bridge was located on the Autobahn between Munich and Salzburg.
141. Quoted in Berthold Hinz, Art in the hird Reich (New York: Pantheon, 1979), 83.
142. Ibid., 111.
143. Ziegler, “Fine Arts in Germany,” in Deutsche Abteilung, 46–7.
144. Die Entstehung der Mosaiken und des Glasfensters im Deutschen Haus der Weltausstellung Paris
1937 in den Vereinigten Werkstätten für Mosaik und Glasmalerei August Wagner, Berlin-Treptow, with photographs by Heinrich Hofmann, Frankl, and Atelier Bohndorf (Berlin: Deutsche Zentraldruckerei AG,
1937).
145. Kain, “Interior of the German Pavilion,” in Deutsche Abteilung, 29.
146. Entstehung der Mosaiken, 1937.
147. Stefanie Poley, “Die Frau als ‘Lebensquell,’ ” in Rollenbilder im Nationalsozialismus—Umgang mit
dem Erbe (Bad Honnef, Germany: Bock, 1991), 33–34; Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York: St. Martin’s, 1987), 184–87.
148. Kain, “Interior of the German Pavilion,” in Deutsche Abteilung, 31, 58.
149. See Dubois, “Travail,” 258; also letters dated 17 September 1936 from the Economics Ministry
to the Auswärtiges Amt, and from Campe to Sabath, and the memorandum from 21 September 1936, PA
Paris 774d.
150. he Matignon Agreement of June 7, 1936, granted worker pay increases, recognized the rights of
trade unions, and established the principle of compulsory collective bargaining.
151. Jackson, Popular Front in France, 133–34.
152. Deutschland in Paris: Ein Bild-Buch von Heinrich Hofmann (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1937), 88.
he text for Hofmann’s book was printed in German, French, English and Italian. he English translations
I use throughout this study, despite their occasional awkwardness, are those originally printed in 1937 by
the German government.
153. In gratitude to the German workers who built the pavilion for the 1937 exposition, Hitler personally ofered them a trip organized by the KdF. he invitation was publicly accepted in Paris by Ruppel on
behalf of his personnel. “La participation allemande,” Le Temps, 18 November 1937.
154. “Visitez l’Allemagne!” German tourism advertisement in L’Illustration, 29 May 1937.
155. Memorandum by Ruppel, AN F12 12534. he Germans also attempted to attract the public with
radio and music. Numerous audio speakers were installed in the grand hall behind the paintings and in the
terrace restaurant. Records and concerts were broadcast during the exposition from the pavilion’s tower.
Labbé, Exposition Internationale, 9:21.
156. Kain, “Interior of the German Pavilion,” in Deutsche Abteilung, 31.
157. Deutschland in Paris, 115.
158. Most of the essays in this book were written in the 1930s, although the oldest sections date back
as early as 1924. he English translations of Bloch’s text that I use in this essay have been taken from Ernst
Bloch, Heritage of Our Times, trans. Neville Plaice and Stephen Plaice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); this volume is a translation of the enlarged and revised edition of Erbschat dieser Zeit
published in 1962 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt. his version<which? Heritage or Erbschat?> contains
several additional essays dating from the late 1930s. See the “Translators’ Introduction” for further information on the evolution and publication of Bloch’s book.
159. Bloch, Heritage of Our Times, 347–48.
160. Ibid., 339.
161. Ibid., 168.
162. For a more extensive analysis of Bloch’s position on fascist aesthetics and the failure of Marxism,
see Karen Fiss, “In Hitler’s Salon: he German Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exposition,” in Art, Culture, and
Media under the hird Reich, ed. Richard Etlin, 316–42 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
CHaP TEr 3
1. Françoise Berthet, “L’Exposition à travers la presse,” in Cinquantenaire de l’Exposition Internationale
des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne (Paris: Institut Français d’Architecture / Paris-Musées, 1987),
474.
2. Weber, Hollow Years, 6–7.
3. Kaplan, Reproductions of Banality, 129.
4. Albert Laprade. “La Trop Belle Exposition,” in L’Exposition de Paris (Paris: Librairie des Arts Décoratifs, A. Calvas, [1938]), n.p.
5. Ibid., n.p.
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6. James Herbert proposes that the construction of a timeless deinition of Frenchness was carried out
in the organization of the large exhibition “Chefs-d’oeuvre de l’art Français.” he exhibition, which included more than thirteen hundred works of French art spanning two millennia, took place just outside the
boundary of the exposition grounds in the Palais de Tokio. Yet Herbert notes that the strength of the new
German state provoked anxiety for the French in the course of this cultural undertaking: “And yet in 1937,
when from French soil one could witness the growth of a competing nationalist sentiment of frightening
belligerence across the Rhine, the very foundations of what constituted a country, a people, a nation—and
when and why these entities developed pathological characteristics—urgently demanded reconsideration.
Around the Chefs-d’oeuvre de l’Art Français, then, we will witness the paradoxical coupling of a Gallic
cockiness about the absolute legitimacy of the French cultural enterprise, together with a deep underlying
anxiety that the Germans, not the French, might somehow have gotten it all, horribly, right.” James Herbert, Paris 1937: Worlds on Exhibition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 84–5.
7. F.-M. Calmont, “La participation étrangère,” La Fléche de Paris, 22 May 1937.
8. Kaplan provides a concise analysis of the confrontation between the Soviet and German pavilions
and the Eifel Tower (see Kaplan, Reproductions of Banality, 127–29). However, she incorrectly states that
Laprade himself noted the symbolism of the tower’s position in relation to the two opposing pavilions.
Nowhere in Laprade’s text does he mention the speciic arrangement of the fairgrounds or the Eifel Tower.
9. his committee was called the Comité d’Initiative pour l’Aménagement et l’Organisation de
l’Exposition Générale Internationale de 1937. See Udovicki, “Projets et concours,”54.
10. For an in-depth study of this reconstruction, see Isabelle Gournay, Le nouveau Trocadéro (Paris:
Institut français d’architecture, 1985).
11. Paul Dupays, Voyages autour du monde: Pavillons étrangers et pavillons coloniaux à l’Exposition de
1937 (Paris: Henri Didier, 1938), 225–26.
12. Rocheteix, “L’Exposition sera-t-elle prête? Sera-t-elle réussie?” Marianne, 24 March 1937.
13. Jean Pujade, “L’Exposition 1937,” Marianne, 24 March 1937.
14. Calmont, “Participation étrangère.” On Bergery and the Front commun, see Sternhell, Neither Right
Nor Let, 13, 161–62, 227–28.
15. Clément Vautel, “Über alles,” Gringoire, 4 June 1937; see also “Une victoire du Front Populaire:
L’Exposition de 1937 sera-t-elle prête en 1938?” Gringoire, 16 April 37.
16. Lucien Rebatet, “Le Front populaire a saboté l’exposition de Paris,” Je suis partout, 24 April 1937.
17. Lucien Rebatet, “L’escroquerie de l’Exposition,” Je suis partout, 29 May 1937.
18. Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Bagatelles pour un massacre (Paris: Denoël, 1937).
19. hierry Maulnier, “Il faut refaire un nationalisme en dépit de la nation,” Combat, April 1937.
20. Denis Hollier, “On Equivocation (Between Literature and Politics),” October 55 (Winter 1990): 9.
21. hierry Maulnier, “Sortirons-nous de l’abjection française?” Combat, November 1936. Quoted in
Sternhell, Neither Right Nor Let, 253.
22. From hierry Maulnier’s introduction to Le Troisième Reich, by A. Moeller van den Bruck (Paris:
Librairie de La Revue rançaise, 1933). Quoted in Sternhell, Neither Right Nor Let, 234.
23. Sternhell, Neither Right Nor Let, 234–35.
24. Germany won a total of 962 medals, Italy 790, the Soviet Union 334, and the United States 320. In
comparison, France was awarded more than 10,000 medals. he juries for the competitions were composed
of members from nearly all the participating nations, though France’s representatives made up roughly half
of the judges. Labbé, Exposition Internationale, 9:64, 11:475; and memorandum of the Propagandaministerium, BA ZSg 101/10.
25. Von Campe and Maiwald also were named as oiciers. Minutes of Afaires Etrangères, Protocole, 9
July 1938. MAE Série C, 301.
26. Amédée Ozenfant, “Notes d’un touriste à l’Exposition,” Cahiers d’Art, nos. 8–10 (1937): 244–45.
27. Jean-Maurice Herrmann, “Le pavillon allemand: Symbole du IIIe Reich,” Le Populaire, 30 May
1937.
28. Louis-E. Galey, “Il nous restera deux palais,” La Flèche de Paris, 29 May 1937.
29. Louis Gillet, Essais sur l’art rançais (Paris: Flammarion, 1938), 30, 192, 199, 205–7.
30. Klaus heweleit, Male Fantasies, vol. 2, trans. Erica Carter and Chris Turner (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 73–97. heweleit’s formulation of the fascist male’s “body armor,” which
he opposes to the chaotic female interior, is developed at numerous points throughout his study. See, for
example, his discussion in the section “Dam and Flood” in Male Fantasies, vol. 1, trans. Stephen Conway
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 434. I reference heweleit here while acknowledging
that his overall analysis of fascism, gender, and desire is highly problematic. Numerous scholars have addressed the weaknesses of heweleit’s unconventional study; see for example, David Carroll, French Literary Fascism: Nationalism, Anti-Semitism, and the Ideology of Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1995), 153–8.
31. Louis Gillet’s views on the hird Reich were complicated. In 1936, he had a dispute with the editors of the pro-Nazi journal Gringoire, who had commissioned him to write an article on Germany during
the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Although Gringoire printed a portion of his essay, they refused to publish it in
its entirety. It is likely that the editors were disturbed by Gillet’s negative remarks concerning Germany’s
rearmament and involvement in the Spanish Civil War. Gillet subsequently published his essay in book
form, Rayons et ombres d’Allemagne (Paris: Flammarion, 1937). As the title suggests, Gillet discerned both
negative and positive aspects of life in the new Reich. In his review of Gillet’s book, Walter Franke noted:
“One senses the author’s personal conlict between his artistic sensibility, strongly moved by the Germany’s
new evolution, and his desire to hide his emotions at all costs” (Walter Franke, “Bücher,” Cahiers FrancoAllemands 10/11 [1937]: 359). hough Gillet did criticize aspects of the regime, he was careful to emphasize in the book’s conclusion that he was by no means anti-German: “I am in no way an enemy of Germany:
I respect and admire this great people to whom the world is indebted for many good acts.” Gillet, Rayons et
ombres d’Allemagne, 273.
32. Waldemar George, “Les pavillons étrangers à l’Exposition de 1937,” L’Architecture, 15 August 1937,
243–72.
33. Herrmann, “Pavillon allemand.”
34. Emile Condroyer, “Visages des nations à l’Expostion,” Monde et Voyages, 1937, 103–105, AN F12
12143.
35. “Le poing et la jaquette,” Candide, 3 June 1937, 2.
36. Jacques Bromont, “Voici les visiteurs payants,” Candide, 3 June 1937, 5.
37. “Enthousiaste après-midi d’ouverture,” L’Oeuvre, 26 May 1937; and “L’inauguration du pavillon de
l’Allemagne: Une imposante manifestation,” L’Oeuvre, 27 May 1937.
38. Herrmann, “Pavillon allemand.”
39. Jean Bazaine, “La peinture à l’Exposition,” Esprit, December 1937, 450–55. For difering analyses
of the political signiicance and “fascist content” of Esprit, see Michel Winock’s sympathetic portrayal in
his book Histoire politique de la revue “Esprit,” 1930–1950 (Paris: Seuil, 1975) and Sternhell’s more critical
discussion in Neither Right Nor Let, xiv–xvi, 213–21, 279–80.
40. See, for example, Herrmann’s article “Pavilion allemand.”
41. Cahiers d’art 8–10 (1937). Herdeg’s photographs were taken in the German pavilion and in the
German section of the pavillon international. his pavilion, built by the French government, provided a few
foreign nations with additional space to display primarily industrial equipment.
42. Labbé, Exposition Internationale, 9:41.
43. Jean Badovici, Architecture de fêtes: Arts et techniques, Paris 1937 (Paris: Éditions A. Morancé,
[1938]). Mies had designed other exhibitions for the Nazi regime before the 1937 exposition. See Richard
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Pommer, “Mies van der Rohe and the Political Ideology of the Modern Movement in Architecture,” in Mies
van der Rohe: Critical Essays, Franz Schulze ed. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1989), 107–29; and
Elaine Hochman, Architects of Fortune: Mies van der Rohe and the hird Reich (New York: Grove, 1989).
44. Joseph Abram, “Herdeg: La lumière des machines,” in Cinquantenaire de l’Exposition Internationale
des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne (Paris: Institut Français d’Architecture / Paris-Musées, 1987),
433.
45. Lydia Lambert, “4 Pavillons, Peuples, Styles à l’Expo,” Regards, 17 June 1937; and “Un guide complet en quatre itinéraires à travers les pavillons,” Regards, 27 May 1937.
46. Lambert, “4 Pavillons, Peuples.”
47. Pierre Lafue, “Destins Allemands,” 1935, 9 January 1935.
48. Monique Constant, “L’accord commercial franco-allemand du 10 juillet 1937,” Revue d’Histoire
Diplomatique 1–2 (1984): 129–33. See also Société Philanthropique de Berlin, bulletin, April 1937, AD
Berlin Embassy, “Fonds C,” 117.
49. Raymond Marcerou, “Quel sera le nombre des étrangers qui visiteront l’Exposition de 1937?” La
Journée Industrielle, 14 March 1937, PA Paris 775b.
50. he overall state of the Franco-German tourist industry and the restrictions imposed on German
travel to the exposition were described in several reports written by M. de Vaux Saint-Cyr, conseiller to the
French Embassy in Munich, and by M. Fuchs, director of the Munich Bureau de tourisme français, to the
Ministère des Afaires Etrangères, Paris. hese reports date from 12 March 1935, 24 February 1936, 22
October 1936, 1 December 1937, 25 April 1939, and 8 May 1939, AD Munich 82.
51.“La famille Kartofel à l’Exposition,” Regards, 17 June 1937.
52. Otto Abetz, “L’Exposition de 1937,” Cahiers Franco-Allemands 6 (1937): 170–71.
53. Félix Bertaux, “Les livres allemands,” Les Cahiers de Radio-Paris, 15 December 1935, 1175–78.
54. Weber cites Marianne as one example of a let-wing newspaper that tolerated anti-Semitic contributions (Hollow Years, 106).
55. Rita halmann, “Jewish Women Exiled in France ater 1933,” in Between Sorrow and Strength:
Women Refugees of the Nazi Period, ed. Sybylle Quack (New York: German Historical Institute and Cambridge University Press, 1995), 51–62.
56. he exhibit took place at 15 rue Gay-Lassac. See Dieter Schiller et al., Exil in Frankreich, vol. 7 of
Kunst und Literatur im antifaschistischen Exil 1933–1945 (Leipzig: Philipp Reclam, 1981), 136, 261–66.
57. Edmond Robert, “L’ambassade de l’esprit allemand à Paris,” Le Populaire, 19 July 1937.
58. Schiller et al., Exil in Frankreich, 264.
59. Marguerite-Yerta Melera, “Paris, capitale de la pensée judéo-allemande,” Je Suis Partout, 2 July 1937.
60. he brochure, Was jeder Besucher von Paris und von der Internationalen Ausstellung 1937 wissen muß,
was reported to the Auswärtiges Amt and to Reichskommissar Ruppel by the SS, who evidently spied on
the emigrant meeting at which the Wegweiser was distributed and discussed. According to the Nazi report,
the meeting, at the Paris café Lumière de Belleville, also addressed possible anti-Nazi activities within the
German pavilion itself. See the report by the Reichsführer SS und Chef der Deutschen Polizei to the Reichsministerium für Volksauklärung und Propaganda, the Auswärtiges Amt, and Reichskommissar Ruppel
from 8 September 1937; the subsequent report dated 14 October 1937 from Sabath of the Auswärtiges
Amt to the German Embassy Paris; and the memorandum by Ruppel of 2 November 1937; PA Paris 775d.
61. he lealet was reported by Reichsbahnoberrat Frölich, who was handed a copy at the entrance to
the German pavilion. See the report of 19 November 37 from the Reichs- und Preussische Verkehrsminister to the Auswärtiges Amt, PA Paris 775d.
62. See Westheim’s articles “Die ganze Richtung paßt ihm nicht. Hitler ‘säubert’ das Haus der
Deutschen Kunst,” in Pariser Tageszeitung 399 (17 July 1937): 4, and “Künstler mit Gleisanschluß,” Die
neue Weltbühne 35, no. 2 (1939): 324–27; both reprinted in Paul Westheim: Kunstkritik aus dem Exil, ed.
Tanja Frank (Hanau, <Germany?>: Müller und Kiepenheuer, 1985), 107–11, 139–44.
63. Paul Westheim, “Karton mit Säulen,” Die neue Weltbühne 1, nos. 33, 43 (1937): 1346–48; 2, no. 44
(1937): 1385–88; and 3, no. 46 (1937): 1444–47. Reprinted in Westheim, Paul Westheim: Kunstkritik aus
dem Exil, 145–61.
64. Westheim, Westheim: Kunstkritik aus dem Exil, 151.
65. he DKb was founded on 30 September 1937 by Westheim, Herta Wescher, Erwin Oehl, Max
Lingner, and Gert Wollheim, with Eugen Spiro as chair. See Keith Holz, Modern German Art for hirties
Paris, Prague, and London: Resistance and Acquiescence in a Democratic Public Sphere (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), 174; as well as his article “he Exiled Artists from Nazi Germany and heir
Art,” in Art, Culture, and Media under the hird Reich, ed. Richard Etlin, 343–67 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2002). he following discussion of the DKb’s activities is based largely on his research.
66. Holz, Modern German Art for hirties Paris, 179–88.
67. Ibid., 188–93. Holz’s discussion draws upon an article by Gilbert Badia, titled “ ‘Fünf Jahre Hitlerregime’: Eine Ausstellung des Pariser hälmann-Komitees im Februar/März 1938,” Beiträge zur Geschichte
der Arbeiterbewegnung 4 (1980): 552–67. he German ambassador also demanded the removal of the exhibition brochure titled Cinq ans de dictature hitlérienne (whose main text was written by Romain Rolland).
he exiles circumvented the police by moving the brochures to a nearby store, where they remained on sale.
Despite the wishes of the German embassy, the French Foreign Ministry declined to ban the sale of the
brochure, basing its decision on a French censorship law of 1881.
68. Ladislas Mysyrowicz, “L’image de l’Allemagne nationale-socialiste a travers les publications françaises des années 1933–1939,” in Les relations ranco-allemandes, 1933–1939: Colloques internationaux du
Centre national de la recherche scientiique (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1976), 117–36.
69. André Gisselbrecht, “Quelques interprétations du phénomène nazi en France entre 1933 et 1939,”
in Les relations ranco-allemandes, 1933–1939: Colloques internationaux du Centre national de la recherche
scientiique (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1976), 157.
70. Ibid., 159.
71. Georges Bataille, “he Psychological Structure of Fascism,” La Critique Sociale 10 (November
1933): 159–65 and 11 (March 1934): 205–11. An English translation by Carl R. Lovitt appears in New
German Critique 16 (Winter 1979): 64–87.
72. John Brenkman, “Introduction to Bataille [he Psychological Structure of Fascism],” New German
Critique 16 (Winter 1979): 60–62.
73. Waldemar George, “L’art et le national-socialisme,” Beaux-Arts, 13 August 1937, 1.
74. Ibid. Contrary to Waldemar George’s claim, Louis Gillet did criticize the Nazi purging of degenerate art in an article from early 1939. His reproach, however, was inspired solely by his nationalism, for
he denounced only Nazi attacks on French painting. See Gillet’s article “L’art français en 1938,” Cahiers
Radio-Paris, January 1939.
75. Waldemar George, “L’art et le national-socialisme,” pt. 2, Beaux-Arts, 20 August 1937, 2.
76. George, “L’art et le national-socialisme,” pt. 1, Beaux-Arts, 13 August 1937, 6.
77. Waldemar George’s ideas on “deracination,” Jewish identity, and anti-Semitism were hardly consistent. As Romy Golan has noted, Waldemar George, who was a French-born Jew, alluded in 1931 to a conspiracy among foreign Jews in France to dominate the world art market. George contended that under the
name École de Paris, these artists gained legitimacy by “pretending” to be French, while they in fact “annihilated” traditional French culture. In 1933, in an article on art and National Socialism, George reiterated
the importance of distinguishing “between France and Montparnasse” when criticizing “the licentiousness
of the Parisian art scene.” Although Waldemar George seems to have toned down his racial self-hatred and
xenophobia by 1937, his conceptions of national tradition and ethnic purity remain disturbing. His ideas
are in fact not terribly diferent from those of the Nazis concerning the cosmopolitan and degenerate na-
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ture of “Jewish” modernism. It stands to reason, then, as Golan further points out, that George advocated
complete assimiliation as the solution to Europe’s “Jewish problem.” See Romy Golan, “he École française
vs. the École de Paris,” in he Circle of Montparnasse: Jewish Artists in Paris, 1905–1945, by Kenneth E. Silver and Romy Golan (New York: Jewish Museum, 1985), 86–87n30.
78. Hervé Bigot, La chambre de culture allemande dans le régime totalitaire du IIIe Reich (Paris: Éditions
Domat-Montchrestien, F. Loviton, 1937); E. Wernert, L’art dans le IIIe Reich: Une tentative d’esthétique
dirigée (Paris: Centre d’Études de Politique Étrangèr, Section d’Information, 1936).
79. Bigot, Chambre de culture allemande, 37–38.
80. Wernert, L’art dans le IIIe Reich, 86–88, 97, 107, 120.
81. Christian Zervos, “Rélexions sur la tentative d’esthétique dirigée du IIIe Reich,” pt. 1, Cahiers d’Art,
nos. 8–10 (1936): 209–12; pt. 2, Cahiers d’Art, nos. 1–3 (1937): 51–61.
82. Ibid., pt. 2, 51.
83. Ibid., 52.
84. Ibid., 56, 59.
85. Ibid., 59, 61.
86. Alphonse de Chateaubriant, “Où va l’art allemand?” Le Petit Journal, 1 September 1937.
87. Letter from SAAE to SOFE, 4 March 1937; telegram from SOFE to François-Poncet, 9 March
1937; letter from Robert Brussel, director of SAAE, to SOFE, AD Berlin 513.
88. François-Poncet to Yvon Delbos, minister of foreign afairs, 8 June 1937, AD Berlin 513.
89. Robert Rey, Contre l’art abstrait (Paris: Flammarion, 1938; new ed. 1957).
90. Lucien Rebatet, “Peinture moderne,” Je Suis Partout, February 14, 1942; quoted in Michèle Cone,
“French Art of the Present in Hitler’s Berlin,” Art Bulletin 58, no. 3 (September 1998): 560.
91. he Surrealists were also conspicuously absent from the oicial exhibitions of French art that took
place during the 1937 Exposition in Paris. Neither “Chefs-d’oeuvre de l’art français” (which contained no
artworks ater 1900) nor “Maîtres de l’art indépendant,” which claimed to be a survey of the “most audacious tendencies of French art,” included any Surrealist artworks. James Herbert makes the point that the
Surrealists mounted their own “Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme” at the Galerie Beaux-Arts within
a few months of the closing of the Paris exposition, partly in response to the rhetoric of the oicial exhibitions. See Herbert, Paris 1937, 123–24.
92. For a detailed list of these exhibits and their contents, see Christian Zuschlag’s essay “An ‘Educational Exhibition’: he Precursors of Entartete Kunst and Its Individual Venues,” in addition to the appendix table 1 of preceding exhibits compiled by him, in Stephanie Barron, ed., Degenerate Art: he Fate of the
Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1991), 83–103.
93. Michèle Cone, Artists under Vichy: A Case of Prejudice and Persecution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1992), 158, 16–19.
94. Paris 1937: L’art indépendant (Paris: Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1987). See also Herbert, Paris 1937, 100–121.
95. Report from François-Poncet to Yvon Delbos, minister of foreign afairs, 8 June 1937, AD Berlin
513.
96. François-Poncet is quoting the National Zeitung here. Ibid.
97. Report from François-Poncet to Yvon Delbos, minister of foreign afairs, 28 January 1937, AD Berlin 513.
98. Hitler’s perceived personal interest in Franco-German artistic relations was also the reason given for
encouraging French artists and curators to accept the German invitation to attend the opening of Troost’s
museum and the “Great German Art” exhibition. Memorandum from M. Charvériat, Direction des affaires politiques et commerciales, sous-direction d’Europe, to Jean Marx, director of Service des oeuvres
françaises à l’étranger, 8 July 1937, AD Berlin 513.
99. François-Poncet, Souvenirs d’une ambassade à Berlin, 272.
100. Indeed, François-Poncet had hoped that a reciprocal exhibition of German sculpture would be
organized the following fall or spring at the Jeu de Paume. his idea was communicated in his speech at the
opening of the Berlin exhibition. “Exposition d’Art français à Berlin: Une allocution de M. François Poncet,” Oeuvre, 6 June 1937.
101. Christian Zervos, “Une exposition d’art français à Berlin,” Cahiers d’Art, nos. 1–3 (1937): 62.
102. Memorandum from SAAE to SOFE 9 March 1937, AD Berlin 513.
103. he catalog that accompanied the exhibit listed some, but not all, of the lenders for the exhibit.
Vlaminck’s paintings in the exhibit also came from French national collections. Ausstellung Französischer
Kunst der Gegenwart, Akademie der Künste, Berlin June/July 1937 (Bibliothèque du Louvre).
104. Bloch, Heritage of Our Times, 350. See also Anson Rabinbach, “Unclaimed Heritage: Ernst Bloch’s
Heritage of Our Times and the heory of Fascism,” New German Critique 11 (Spring 1977): 7.
105. Bloch notes how this misuse resulted in part from the symbiotic relationship between National
Socialism and big business: “the more clearly the previous instruments of power for suppressing real socialism fail, the more exactly big business needs fascist dictatorship and narcosis as well, as dictatorship in a
diferent form” (Heritage of Our Times, 350). See also David Kaufmann, “hanks for the Memory: Bloch,
Benjamin, and the Philosophy of History,” Yale Journal of Criticism 6, no. 1 (1993): 144–45.
106. Bataille, “Psychological Structure of Fascism,” 82.
107. Ibid., 86–87.
CHaP TEr 4
1. Goebbels’s eforts to take over the German ilm industry were made easier because the major companies were facing large deicits and bankruptcy. With the assistance of Max Winkler, he covertly acquired
shares and bought out the principal ilm companies through the Cautio Treuhand GmbH, a trust company,
which then administered them for the state. Ater the nationalization process was complete, Max Winkler
was appointed Reich ilm inance plenipotentiary. In June 1935, with the passage of the Second Act to
Amend the Motion Picture Law, Goebbels had himself appointed senior censor, with unlimited authority
to ban and modify ilms. he Reich Film Chamber was put in charge of the Aryanization of the industry.
David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 32–34; Klaus
Kreimeier, he UFA Story: A History of Germany’s Greatest Film Company, 1918–1945 (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1996), 229–31, 266. For a thorough study of the political economy of the German ilm industry
under the hird Reich, see also Jürgen Spiker, Film und Kapital: Der Weg der deutschen Filmwirtschat zum
nationalsozialistischen Einheitskonzern (Berlin: Volker Spiess, 1975).
2. he program included twenty-seven full-length feature ilms, seventy-seven short documentaries, and
fourteen newsreel programs. Further, there were screenings of a documentary on the making of Leni Riefenstahl’s 1936 Berlin Olympics ilm, in addition to her infamous Triumph of the Will. For a complete list
of German ilms at the 1937 expo, see Labbé, Exposition Internationale, 9:61–62.
3. See “Les sections étrangères,” Cinématographie Française, 18 June 1937), 118–19; M.B., “L’activité du
cinéma allemand,” Pour Vous, 22 July 1937, 10.
4. Eric Rentschler, he Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Aterlife (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1996), 109.
5. Lutz Koepnick, he Dark Mirror: German Cinema between Hitler and Hollywood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 2, 134.
6. he British and American industries also undertook such productions, as did the Italian cinema. he
Americans, however, soon abandoned multiversions, turning instead to the less expensive technique of
dubbing. Ginette Vincendeau maintains that American multiversion ilms were “too standardized to satisfy
the cultural diversity of their target audience, but too expensively diferentiated to be proitable.” Europe-
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Notes
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an-made multiversions were much more successful due to the “closer cultural understanding” between nations. See Ginette Vincendeau, “Hollywood Babel,” Screen 29, no. 2 (Spring 1988): 24–39.
7. Francis Courtade, “Les coproductions franco-allemandes et versions multiples des années 30,” in Tendres ennemis: Cent ans de cinéma entre la France et l’Allemagne, ed. Heike Hurst and Heiner Gassen (Paris:
Éditions L’Harmattan, 1991), 173. My subtitle for this section is indebted to this anthology. he phrase is
a play on the title of the ilm by Max Ophuls, La tendre ennemie (he Tender Enemy, 1935).
8. he reasons for the change were discussed in an interview with Raoul Ploquin, the director of French
versions for UFA. “M. Raoul Ploquin nous dit pourquoi l’ACE a renoncé aux doubles versions,” Cinématographie Française, 26 December 1936, 104.
9. Dudley Andrew, Mists of Regret: Culture and Sensibility in Classic French Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 99.
10. Henri Jeanson, review of L’etrange Monsieur Victor (1938), quoted in Jean-Pierre Jeancolas, 15 ans
d’années trente: Le cinéma des rançais, 1929–1944 (Paris: Stock, 1983), 24n10.
11. his strategy was already in place before the establishment of the hird Reich. According to a circular published by Tobis in 1930, ilms that appeared to be French productions “more easily penetrated” the
markets of central Europe and the Balkans, because most of these countries were “allies of France.” Quoted
in Courtade, “Coproductions franco-allemandes,” 178.
12. Letter from Marx to the embassies and consulates of France, 13 April 1939, AD Munich 82.
13. his strategy sometimes failed, as the 1936 U.S. release of Amphitryon demonstrates. he Anti-Nazi
League picketed the Fiity-ith Street Playhouse in New York City ater its owner advertised Amphitryon
as a French ilm. Sabine Hake, Popular Cinema of the hird Reich (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001),
141.
14. “Le marché français de 1927 à 1937,” Cinématographie Française, 31 December 1937, 84.
15. Paul Léglise, Histoire de la politique de cinéma rançais: Le cinéma et la IIIe République (Paris: Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1970), 267–70.
16. See, for example, the open letter from the president of the Chambre Syndicale des Producteurs
Français de Films to the Ministre du Commerce et de l’Industrie, published in La Cinématographie Française, 6 June 1936. Refer also to the letters written to the Commission Interministérielle de Coordination
des Questions Cinématographiques and to the Ministre du Commerce during the months of September
and October 1938, AD Service des échanges artistiques 179.
17. Léglise, Histoire de la politique de cinéma rançais, 267–69.
18. Garçon, De Blum à Petain, 24.
19. Léglise, Histoire de la politique de cinéma rançais, 268–69.
20. Rosay’s letter thanking Brinon for his intervention, written 25 May 1934 from Berlin, is cited in
Gilbert Joseph, Fernand de Brinon: L’aristocrate de la collaboration (Paris: Albin Michel, 2002), 110.
21. Raymond Chirat and Roger Icart, Catalogue des ilms rançais de long métrage: Film sonores de iction
1929–1939 (Brussels: Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique, 1981); and Maurice Bessy and Raymond Chirat,
Histoire du cinéma rançais: Encyclopédie des ilms, 1935–1939 (Paris: Pygmalion, 1987).
22. Rémy Pithon, “Cinéma français et cinéma allemand des années trente: De l’échange à l’exil,” in Les
relations culturelles ranco-allemandes dans les années trente (Paris: Deutscher Akademischer Austauch Diest
and Institut d’historie du temps présent, 1990), 2:605–6.
23. Roger Leenhardt, “Ou l’on ouvre l’école du spectateur,” Esprit 38 (November 1935): 332–35.
24. Pithon, “Cinéma français et cinéma allemand,” 608–10. Several of the French cinema personalities
who worked in Germany, such as Grémillon and Louis Daquin, espoused political positions that were decidedly on the Let. Jean Renoir and his “disciple” Jacques Becker tried to dissuade Daquin from working
in Germany, but by the spring of 1939, Becker also decided to accepted a position in Berlin. Marcel Carné
and Jacques Prévert also signed a contract with Ploquin for UFA to produce Quai des brumes, although
UFA ultimately withdrew from the deal. Evidently, UFA was worried that a ilm originating in Germany
that depicted the fate of a French deserter might spark political controversy.
25. Charles-A. Rickard, “Avec le Führer Pierre Blanchar,” 1934, 4 July 1934, 13. Years later in 1943,
Blanchar would be associated with the French resistance as president of the Comité de libération du cinema français. Evelyn Erhlich, Cinema of Paradox: French Filmmaking under the German Occupation (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 170.
26. Colin Crisp, he Classic French Cinema, 1930–1960 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1993), 98–101.
27. Susan Hayward, French National Cinema (London: Routledge, 1993), 154.
28. Lucien Derain, “Jacques Feyder tourne à Munich Les Gens du Voyage,” Cinématographie Française, 19
November 1937, 15. Feyder was one of the few French directors given control of both the French and German versions.
29. Maurice Bessy, “Les gens du voyage se sont arrêtés en pleine bavière dans un petit village français,”
Cinémonde, 18 November 1937, 998–99.
30. Courtade, “Coproductions franco-allemandes,” 178–82.
31. “Films Sonores Tobis devient Filmsonor,” Cinématographie Française, 10 June 1938, 11; and Pithon,
“Cinéma français et cinéma allemand,” 609.
32. Report dated 12 November 1937 from Christian Vaux-Saint-Cyr, conseiller d’ambassade, Consulat
général de France à Munich, to the Ministre des Afaires Etrangères, AD Munich 82. For example, see the
article by Maurice Bessy in Cinémonde cited above.
33. M. C.-R. “Les journalistes français à Munich,” Cinématographie Française, 19 November 1937, 57;
and Christian Vaux-Saint-Cyr’s report, 12 November 1937.
34. Ginette Vincendeau, “France—terre d’accueil: L’industrie cinématographique française des années
30 face aux étrangers,” in Tendres ennemis, ed. Hurst and Gassen, 144.
35. he decree of 23 April 1933 limited the number of foreign employees according to the type of work:
5 percent for musicians, 10 percent for members of the chorus, 50 percent for sound engineers, and so on.
he Fédération nationale des artisans français du ilm found the new regulations unsatisfactory, however,
and demanded that the maximum number of foreign technical staf be reduced to just one-ith the total
of French personnel. In response to their protest, the French justice minister decided that his oice would
no longer consider requests for naturalization, and the minister of labor announced that he would not give
any more work visas to foreign cinema professionals. See Léglise, Histoire de la politique de cinéma rançais,
136–38.
36. Serge Veber, “Le cinéma français aux Français!” Pour Vous, 23 March 1938, 2.
37. Andrew, Mists of Regret, 171–72.
38. Remy Garrigues, “Hitler et le ilm allemand,” Almanach Ciné-Miroir (a publication of Le Petit Parisien), 1936, 181–83.
39. Les dessous du cinéma allemand (Paris: Courrier du Centre, n.d. [1934]); quoted in Crisp, Classic
French Cinema, 179.
40. Jean-Pierre Jeancolas, “French Cinema of the 1930s and Its Sociological Handicaps,” in La vie est a
nous! French Cinema of the Popular Front, 1935–1938, ed. Ginette Vincendeau and Keith Reader (London:
British Film Institute, 1986), 68. Susan Hayward similarly maintains that “a quick glance at what was going
on in the cinema industry during the 1930s might serve metonymically as an illustration for France’s unpreparedness or unwillingness to contemplate war until the very last moment.” See Hayward, French National
Cinema, 153.
41. his was true even if the German studios had already produced a French-language equivalent. For
example, Flüchtlinge was included in the German program at the fair instead of its French sister production
Au bout de monde (1933).
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42. Germany staged ive galas at Ciné 37 and several others at its pavilion. In comparison, Great Britain
staged two galas at Ciné 37, while other participating nations held one gala each (Austria, Czechoslovakia,
Finland, Japan, Poland, Romania, and the USSR). Italy, Luxembourg, and South Africa also screened ilm
programs at Ciné 37. See the list of participating nations in Photo et cinema à l’Exposition de Paris 1937:
Rapport general, class VI et XIV (Paris: Imprimerie Louis Jean, 1937), 117–18.
43. See, for example, “Cent soixant ilms allemands prévus de la saison 1936–37,” Comoedia, 10 October 1936, 4; and “Un grande efort s’airme dans le cinema allemand: Il sera en grande partie au service de
la propagande,” Cœmedia, 4 December 1936, 6.
44. Robert Lorette, “C’est ‘armée’ de 60 grands ilms et de 40 documentaires que le cinéma allemand se
présentera à l’Exposition Internationale,” Paris-Midi, 17 May 1937.
45. Claude Bernier, “Ciné Expo 37,” Ciné-Miroir, 9 July 1937.
46. Lucien Rebatet (François Vinneuil, pseud.), “La rénaissance du cinéma allemand,” Je Suis Partout, 30
July 1937.
47. Karsten Witte, “Too Beautiful to Be True: Lilian Harvey,” New German Critique 74 (Summer
1998): 39.
48. Lutz Koepnick makes this same point concerning the hird Reich’s packaging of documentary
shorts as required watching before feature-length dramas in Germany. He asserts that “Nazi cinema in fact
did not spare any efort to monitor the entire act of going to the movies” and that documentary shorts “offered predigested meanings and set the stage for the pleasures of melodramatic excess.” Koepnick, Dark
Mirror, 96.
49. Photo et cinema à l’Exposition, 124.
50. Seventy-seven documentaries were shown at the exposition. Among them were Waldgeheimnisse;
Landschat und Leben; Die bayerischen Alpen von Garmisch-Partenkirchen; Berlin; Hamburg und seine
Hachbarstadt Altona; Besuch in Frankfurt am Main; Kassel: die Kunst und Gartenstadt; Im Deutschen Museum in München; Auf Deutschlands neuen Autostraßen; Fliegende Züge; Die Reichsbahn unterfährt Berlin;
Metall des Himmels; Mannesmann: Ein Film der Mannesmannröhren-Werke (also by Ruttmann); Schönes
gastliches Land zwischen Rhein und Main, and Reisen im schönen Deutschland. Other notable ilms were
“scientiic” or focused on natural subjects, including Svend Noldan’s Was ist die Welt, Mysterium des Lebens,
Sinnesleben der Planzen, and Unendlicher Weltenraum. All of these ilms are listed in Labbé, Exposition Internationale, 9:59–61. Several of them are also discussed by Christian Delage in La vision nazi de l’histoire
à travers le cinema documentaire du Troisième Reich (Lausanne: Éditions L’Age d’Homme, 1989). On Nazi
documentaries in general, see also Hilmar Hofmann, he Triumph of Propaganda: Film and National Socialism, 1933–1945, trans. John A. Broadwin and V. R. Berghahn (Providence, RI: Berghahn, 1996; and
Wolf Donner, Propaganda und Film im “Dritten Reich” (Berlin: TIP, 1995).
51. Goebbels formed the Deutsche Film-Nachrichten-Büro in 1933 to manage all German newsreel
companies.
52. Pierre Ogouz, “Actualité,” Pour Vous, 20 April 1937, 11.
53. Rentschler, Ministry of Illusion, 121–22.
54. Hake notes that “going to the movies became part of a tightly choreographed culture of public
spectacles and mass diversions that, at least according to the ambitious plans of the Propaganda Ministry,
equated looking with experience and reduced politics to alternately voyeuristic and exhibitionist scenarios.”
Hake, Popular Cinema of the hird Reich, 81. Lutz Koepnick, in his study of the relationship between German cinema and Hollywood, emphasizes alternately the importance of synchronized sound in manipulating the audience’s attention and in integrating them into “the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk of the German
nation.” Koepnick, Dark Mirror, 11.
55. Hake, Popular Cinema of the hird Reich, 72. Jews were excluded from all cultural events in 1938.
56. Koepnick, Dark Mirror, 73; Hake, Popular Cinema of the hird Reich, 71.
57. Hayward, French National Cinema, 24. he only American-made ilms shown in the course of the
exposition were a handful of short documentaries. For descriptions of these ilms, see Photo et cinéma à
l’Exposition, 150–51. he overall participation of the United States at the fair was generally unimpressive.
Congress allocated meager funds for the pavilion (less than one-tenth of what the Germans and Soviets
spent), and its unadventurous modernist design by architect Paul Lester Wiener was either ignored by critics or poorly received. See David Littlejohn, “Etas-Unis,” in Cinquantenaire de l’Exposition Internationale
des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne (Paris: Institut Français d’Architecture / Paris-Musées, 1987),,
156–57.
58. Léglise, Histoire de la politique de cinéma rançais, 261–67.
59. Ibid., 162; see also 93–94. he French press responded defensively to the American rebuke. An article from Cinématographie Française (7 May 1937) maintained that the congress did not represent a “Nazi
bloc” as it was being organized and directed by French members. he position of president of the Chambre
internationale had been passed from Oswald Lehnich, president of the Reichsilmkammer, to a Frenchman,
Georges Lourau. Lehnich, however, remained vice president of the organization, whereas Lourau, as director of Tobis Filmsonor, the French ailiate of the large German company, also maintained strong business
ties to the hird Reich.
60. Rentschler, Ministry of Illusion, 117–21.
61. “Les présentations de ilms allemands au Ciné 37 à l’Exposition vous ont fait connaître deux nouvelles vedettes allemandes,” Cinématographie Française, 26 November 1937, 45.
62. Koepnick, Dark Mirror, 72–77.
63. Rentschler, Ministry of Illusion, 126.
64. Koepnick, Dark Mirror, 100–101.
65. “In Paris Filmpavillon eröfnet: Vor dem deutschen Kino steht man Schlange,” Film-Kurier, 1 July
1937, 1.
66. Hans Weidemann, “Der deutsche Film auf der Weltausstellung,” Der deutsche Film 1, no. 2 ( July
1937): 2.
67. Labbé, Exposition Internationale, 9:63.
68. Marcel Idzkowski, “A l’Exposition: Du Cinéma permanent et gratuit . . . au pavillon allemand mais
les directeurs de salle protestent!” Le Jour, 17 June 37; “A propos de la présentation gratuite de ilms à
l’Exposition,” Cinématographie Française, 17 September 1937, 16; “Courrier de l’écran: Un geste élégant,”
Le Temps, 11 September 1937.
69. Pierre Michaut, “L’Exposition de Paris 1937 donne au cinéma sa véritable place dans la vie moderne,” Cinématographie Française, 25 June 1937, 107.
70. Ibid. See also Labbé, Exposition Internationale, 9:63.
71. H.N., “La grande semaine artistique allemande vient de s’ouvrir: Première représentation du ilm Les
Patriotes au Palais du cinéma,” Le Petit Journal, 4 September 1937. he premiere of Der Herrscher attracted
numerous personalities, including Germain Dulac and his wife, Abel Gance, Henri Chomette, Roger Weil,
and Jean Chataigner. “On a présenté hier soir à Ciné 37 le dernier ilm d’Emil Jannings,” Paris-Soir, 30 September 1937.
72. Boguslaw Drewniak, Der deutsche Film 1938–1945: Ein Gesamtüberblick (Düsseldorf: Droste,
1987), 85.
73. For a complete list of events, see the oicial program for La semaine artistique allemande, 3–12 September 1937, AN F12 12213; and Labbé, Exposition Internationale, 9:54–58.
74. “Reception à l’ambassade d’Allemagne à Paris,” Beaux-Arts, 10 September 1937, 4.
75. Drewniak, Deutsche Film 1938–1945, 85.
76. David Stewart Hull, Film in the hird Reich: A Study of the German Cinema 1933–1945 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1969), 118.
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77. Drewniak, Deutsche Film 1938–1945, 85 and 877n207.
78. Correspondingly, Veit Harlan, the director of Der Herrscher, and Emil Jannings, the ilm’s leading
man, were appointed to the board of Tobis ive months earlier. Hull, Film in the hird Reich, 109–10. See
also “De gros changement dans l’industrie du cinéma allemand,” Cinématographie Française, 14 May 1937,
22.
79. Oicial synopsis of Patrioten, published in the Illustrierter Film-Kurier. Quoted in Hull, Film in the
hird Reich, 119.
80. H.N., “Grande semaine artistique allemande.”
81. Louis Cheronnet, “Patriotes,” Beaux-Arts, 10 September 1937, 5.
82. George L. Mosse, he Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in
Germany rom the Napoleonic Wars through the hird Reich (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991
[orig. 1975]), 122–25, 145, 173, 177–82.
83. Ferro, Cinema and History, 132.
84. Bazin, Jean Renoir, 65.
85. “Patrioten a été présenté hier soir à l’Exposition au gala du cinéma allemand,” Paris-Midi, 5 September 1937.
86. Hull, Film in the hird Reich, 120.
87. Andrew, Mists of Regret, 293.
88. Report dated 8 November 1937 from André François-Poncet to the Ministre des Afaires
Etrangères, AD Berlin “C” 121.
89. Roger d’Alméras, “Un nouveau ilm allemand,” La Journée Industrielle, 1 October 1937.
90. “Un beau ilm allemand: Patrioten,” Pour Vous, 9 September 1937, 2.
91. Robert Brasillach, “La semaine allemande: Les ilm,” Candide, 9 September 1937, 15.
92. See, for example, Rebatet’s review of La grande illusion in Je Suis Partout, 12 June 1937, 4. While
Rebatet ills his article with his usual anti-Semitic commentary, he nevertheless reveals his admiration for
the ilm.
93. Koepnick, Dark Mirror, 35.
94. Cheronnet, “Patriotes,” Beaux-Arts, 10 September 1937, 5.
95. Paris-Midi, 5 September 1937; Beaux-Arts, 10 September 1937, 5; Pour Vous, 9 September 1937, 2.
96. Koepnick, Dark Mirror, 278n37.
97. he German press hailed the work as a “Meisterilm” and as the “irst ilm of the new era.” Frank
Maraun, “Eine deutscher Meisterilm,” Berliner Börsen-Zeitung, 18 March 1937; Joachim Bremer, “Der
erste Film der neuen Aera,” Das 12 Uhr Blatt, 18 March 1937, reprinted in Tobis, ed., Der Herrscher: Ungekürzte Pressestimmen [1937]. See also Ciné-Journal, 15 September 1937, 5.
98. Angela Dalle Vacche notes a similar phenonemon around the igure of Mussolini. She writes:
“While Mussolini relied on the power of spectacle to unify, he was also aware of the necessity to personify
a multiplicity of roles. he Duce’s body became the mirror of the fantasy-selves of Italians. he fascist man
supposedly has the eicacy of an athlete and of an intellectual, of a warrior and of a father.” See Angela
Dalle Vacche, he Body in the Mirror: Shapes of History in Italian Cinema (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 24.
99. M.B., “Le gala allemand,” Pour Vous, 6 October 1937, 2. he short documentary Schwarzwaldmelodie (Melody of the Black Forest) also preceded the screenings of Der Herrscher.
100. Karsten Witte, “Film im Nationalsozialismus: Blendung und Überblendung,” in Geschichte des
deutschen Films, ed. Wolfgang Jacobsen et al., with Stitung Deutsche Kinemathek (Berlin: J. B. Metzler,
1993), 136.
101. Gerhart Hauptmann, Vor Sonnenuntergang (Frankfurt: Ullstein heater Texte, 1959).
102. he resonances between the plays by Hauptmann and Shakespeare have been examined by Freder-
ick Amrine in his article “Hauptmann’s Vor Sonnenuntergang: A new King Lear?” Colloquia Germanica 13,
no. 3 (1980): 220–32.
103. Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933–1945, 162–63.
104. Linda Schulte-Sasse notes that the igure of Inken Peters, in her seemingly timeless youth and having been raised “in nature” on her mother’s orchard, stands in for the world of preindustrial harmony. “Her
semiotic linkage with nature equips her to redeem an urban organism infected by modernity.” See Linda
Schulte-Sasse, Entertaining the hird Reich: Illusions of Wholeness in Nazi Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1996), 274–81.
105. Kaplan, Reproductions of Banality, 21–23. Claudia Koonz ofers a similar though less psychoanalytic view of female identity under the hird Reich: “Busily administering welfare services, educational
programs, leisure activities, ideological indoctrination and consumer organizations, Nazi women mended
while Nazi men marched.” Mothers in the Fatherland, xxxiii.
106. “Eine Symphonie von Stahl und Eisen.” Witte, “Film im Nationalsozialismus,” 134.
107. “Matthias Clausen, the owner of a huge iron and steel works, lives among people from another
age—one could almost say: from the prewar era.” Paul Otte, “Überreich an Schauspielerischen Glanzleistungen,” Berliner Volks-Zeitung, 18 March 1937.
108. Kaplan argues that the repressed semiotic register of language reappears in the fascist desire for the
assurance and excitement of the voice. Rhythm and repetition are basic to pre-Oedipal linguistic relationships, in which intonation more than the tone of voice functions as the principle of recognition. Although
this irst experience of authority, which allows for the “oral discovery of self,” is linked to the maternal in
development, it becomes subsumed later within the phallocentric hierarchy of societal relations. Kaplan,
Reproductions of Banality, 7–13.
109. Lucien Rebatet [François Vinneuil, pseud.], “Der Herrscher—le Maître,” Je Suis Partout, 22 October 1937, 9. Rebatet became very involved in the nascent radio broadcasting system in his search for “a
fascist voice in France.” He chose his pseudonym, “Vinneuil,” ater Proust’s musician Vinteuil, “who liked
to read out loud, loves simply to talk, to play his voice.” Kaplan, Reproductions of Banality, 133.
110. Marguerite Bussot, “A l’Exposition: Le gala cinématographique allemand,” Intransigeant, 30 September 1937.
111. Roger d’Alméras, “Un nouveau ilm allemand,” La Journée Industrielle, 1 October 1937.
112. Bulletin, Agence d’information Cinégraphique de la Presse Française et Étrangère, 23 March 1937.
113. M.B., “Le gala allemand,” Pour Vous, 6 October 1937, 2.
114. René Jeanne, “Le Maître à l’Exposition,” Le Petit Journal, 4 October 1937. Only Pierre Arnal, chargé d’afaires at the French embassy in Berlin, dismissed the ilm on artistic as well as ideological grounds.
Just before the opening of the 1937 exposition, he reported to the Ministère des afaires étrangères that the
ilm was weak and mediocre. Arnal to Yvon Delbos, 6 May 1937, AD Berlin 513.
115. Kracauer describes the complete absorption created by the cinematic experience as follows: “he
stimulation of the senses succeed each other with such rapidity that there is no room let for even the
slightest contemplation to squeeze in between them.” However, he wrongly places the burden of political
responsibility on the ilmmaker and those who control the means of production, rather than attributing
any of that responsibility to the viewer. Refer to his “Cult of Distraction: On Berlin’s Picture Palaces,” trans.
homas Y. Levin, New German Critique, no. 40 (Winter 1987): 91, 94.
CHaP TEr 5
1. Danielle Tartakowsky estimates that there were more than one thousand marches, parades, and demonstrations between February 1934 and March 1936 alone, most of them organized by the Let. See “Stratégies de la rue, 1934–1936,” Le Mouvement Social, no. 135 (April-June 1986): 32.
2. hese events followed the bloody political violence that struck Paris on the night of February 6, when
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right-wing groups demonstrated against Edouard Daladier, who resigned a day later.
3. he most notable among these studies is Pascal Ory’s epic La belle illusion: Culture et politique sous
le signe du Front populaire, 1935–1938 (Paris: Plon, 1994). In his analysis, Ory does not discuss Nazi or
French fascist pageantry.
4. Pierre Ogouz, “Actualités,” Pour Vous, 20 April 1938, 11. Ogouz made this comment in the context of
discussing newsreels of Nazi torchlight parades in Berlin.
5. Quoted in Philippe Burrin, “Poings levés et bras tendus: La contagion des symboles au temps du
Front populaire,” Vingtième Siècle 11 ( July-September 1986): 5–20. Burrin notes that the escalation of
mass demonstrations organized by the French Let in the mid-1930s was largely a reaction to the rising
membership of the French Fascist leagues. he French Let became increasingly concerned over the large
numbers of youths who were being attracted by the commanding uniforms, dramatic rituals, and “revolutionary dynamism” of the extreme right organizations. While the model of the Soviet Union continued
to be important in shaping Popular Front political demonstrations, Burrin asserts that the French socialist
and communist organizations also drew heavily from fascist rallying techniques. In this way, they were following the ill-fated example of the German Let, which during the Weimar period similarly appropriated
fascist strategies in an attempt to stave of the advances of right-wing nationalist groups, and in particular
of the Nazi Party.
6. Eugène Beaudouin, “Mystiques et espaces,” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui, special issue, May-June 1937,
92.
7. Mona Ozouf, Festivals of the French Revolution, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 128–30.
8. Declaration by Sarrette, 30 Brumaire, year 2; quoted in Ozouf, Festivals of the French Revolution, 129.
9. Michelet, Histoire de la Revolution rançaise, preface of 1847; quoted in Ozouf, Festivals of the French
Revolution, 148–49.
10. See “A Nuremberg Hitler proclame,” L’Oeuvre, 8 September 1937, and “A Nuremberg, les leaders
nazis reculent les limites de l’orgueil tenton,” L’Oeuvre, 11 September 1937.
11. he Open Air School in Suresnes was built with funding from the socialist maire Henri Sellier
in 1934–35. Beaudouin and Lods were also responsible for designing the following major projects in
the 1930s: the Cité du Champ des Oiseaux in Bagneux, the Cité de la Muette in Drancy, the aviation
clubhouse at Roland Garros, and the Maison du Peuple in Clichy. See Paola Veronica Dell’Aira, Eugene
Beaudouin, Marcel Lods: Ecole de Plein Air (Florence: Alinea, 1992); and Marcel Lods, 1891–1978: Photographies d’architecte (Paris: Centre de Création Industrielle, Centre Georges Pompidou, and l’Académie
d’Architecture, 1992).
12. Riefenstahl had been commissioned previously to document the 1933 rallies in the ilm Sieg des
Glaubens (Victory of Faith, 1933). Another ilm shown at the 1937 exposition which included representations of the Nuremberg rallies was a short German documentary by Tobis-Kulturilm entitled Die Kamera
fährt mit (he Camera Comes Along, 1937). he footage was not ilmed by Riefenstahl but by newsreel cameramen. I would like to thank Cooper C. Graham, curator of the Motion Pictures Collection at the Library
of Congress, for clarifying the source of footage in this newsreel.
13. Riefenstahl’s ilm does not accurately “document” these speeches. Rather, she combined speeches
from various meetings and also rerecorded Julius Streicher’s remarks, which had been missed due to technical diiculties. Richard Barsam, Filmguide to “Triumph of the Will” (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1975), 25, 40–41.
14. Siegfried Kracauer, Propaganda and the Nazi War Film (New York: Museum of Modern Art Film
Library, 1942); From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947).
15. Siegfried Kracauer, “he Mass Ornament,” trans. Barbara Correll and Jack Zipes, New German
Critique 5 (Spring 1975): 67–69. he essay was originally published in the Frankfurter Zeitung (9 and 10
July 1927) and was later reprinted in Siegfried Kracauer, Das Ornament der Masse (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp
Verlag, 1965).
16. Kracauer, “Mass Ornament,” 70.
17. Walter Benjamin, “he Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, ed.
Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1969), 217–51. he original German essay
appeared in Zeitschrit für Sozialforschung 5, no. 1 (1936). Martin Loiperdinger similarly asserts the importance of Kracauer’s and Benjamin’s writings to the study of Riefenstahl’s ilm; see Martin Loiperdinger,
Rituale der Mobilmachung: Der Parteitagsilm “Triumph des Willens” von Leni Riefenstahl (Opladen, Germany: Leske + Budrich, 1987), 13–41.
18. Georges Champeaux, “Le cinéma: Le triomphe de la volonté,” Gringoire, July 9, 1937, 15. Champeaux also wrote for the profascist journals Je Suis Partout, Combats, and Cri du Peuple.
19. “On peut préfèrer—et c’est mon sentiment—les évolutions d’une troupe de girls, mais du point de
vue cinématographique l’efet est le même.” Ibid..
20. Kracauer compares the evolution of mass ornament to the origins of classical ballet: “In its early
stages the ballet also yielded ornaments which moved kaleidoscopically. But even ater they had discarded
their ritual meaning, they remained still the plastic formation of the erotic life which gave rise to them and
determined their traits. In contrast, the synchronized movement of the Girls is devoid of any such connections; it is a linear system which no longer has erotic meaning but at best points to the place where the
erotic resides.” Kracauer, “Mass Ornament,” 68.
21. See Klaus heweleit, Male Fantasies, trans. Stephen Conway (vol. 1) and Erica Carter and Chris
Turner (vol. 2) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987–89), in particular 1:429–35 and
2:73–97. Claudia Koontz, in her study of women in the hird Reich, emphasizes that Hitler considered
“the Nazi Revolution” to be “an entirely male event.” She notes that Nazi women, who worked outside the
male-dominated political framework, were “aghast” that no activities for women were organized at the
Nuremberg party rallies. “In seven days of speeches, spectacles, demonstrations, and meetings, not one
hour for women had been organized.” Mothers in the Fatherland, 55–57, 156. However, an exception was
made at the 1937 rallies when members of the Women’s Labor Service Corps attended the Labor Service
Day exercises for the irst time. See Hamilton T. Burden, he Nuremberg Party Rallies, 1923–39 (New
York: Praeger, 1967), 141.
22. Susan Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism,” New York Review of Books, February 6, 1975, 26. Reprinted in
Susan Sontag, Under the Sign of Saturn (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1980).
23. Koontz, Mothers in the Fatherland, 66. Koontz contends that Hitler “released men from society’s
emotional straitjackets and rendered them ‘feminine’ in their obeisance and even obsequiousness. . . .
‘Feminine,’ more than ‘masculine,’ emotions provided the ideal model for Hitler’s followers: blindly obedient, passionate, and weak.”
24. Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler, 94–95.
25. Champeaux, “Le cinéma: Le triomphe de la volonté.”
26. Marguerite Bussot, “Leni Riefenstahl et le pavillon Photo-Ciné-Phono à l’Exposition,” Pour Vous, 8
July 1937, 2.
27. “Les Trois stars du IIIème Reich,” Pour vous (1 July 1937): 3.
28. “Une Nouvelle croix gammée.” Cinémonde (24 June 1937): 588.
29. Paul Autré, “Leni Riefenstahl est venue oiciellement présenter à Paris ses deux ilms,” Cinématographie rançaise 974/5 (2–9 July 1937): 10.
30. Roland Migliévy, “Léni Riefenstahl à Paris,” Cinémonde (8 July 1937): 1.
31. Indeed, Riefenstahl would make several trips to France in the latter part of the decade, including
a trip in February 1939 when she was hosted by the CFA in Paris. Gilbert Joseph, Fernand de Brinon:
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L’Aristocrate de la Collaboration (Paris: Albin Michel, 2002), 198.
32. Kracauer, Propaganda and the Nazi War Film, 45–6.
33. Benjamin, Illuminations, 217.
34. Barsam, Filmguide to “Triumph of the Will,” 24–25. See also Siegfried Zelnhefer, Die Reichsparteitage
der NSDAP in Nürnberg (Nuremberg: Verlag Nürnberger Presse, 2002), 226–31.
35. Lucien Rebatet [François Vinneuil, pseud.], “Les ilms de Leni Riefenstahl,” Je Suis Partout, 20 August 1937, 2.
36. “Le cinéma à l’Exposition,” Le Petit Journal, 9 July 1937.
37. Roland Bosquet, “A l’Exposition: Le cinéma allemand,” L’Epoque, 30 October 1937.
38. Rebatet, “Films de Leni Riefenstahl,” 2.
39. Russell Berman, Modern Culture and Critical heory: Art, Politics, and the Legacy of the Frankfurt
School (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 102–7.
40. Steve Neale, “Triumph of the Will: Notes on Documentary and Spectacle,” Screen 20, no. 1 (Spring
1979): 63–86.
41. Ibid., 66.
42. Ibid., 68.
43. Champeaux, “Le cinéma: Le triomphe de la volonté,” 15.
44. Neale, “Triumph of the Will,” 67, 71.
45. Riefenstahl claims that Goebbels attempted to undermine her project by blocking the installation
of the elevator and tracks for her cameras, but that Rudolf Hess intervened on her behalf. However, there
is no evidence to back her claims. Richard Barsam notes that the ilming of the Labor Service rally in particular seems to “have been staged, photographed, and recorded for the beneit of the cameras.” Barsam,
Filmguide to “Triumph of the Will,” 24, 43. Hamilton Burden concurs that the party rallies were “planned
and organized to create a powerful propaganda ilm that could . . . be shown around the world.” He discusses in detail the structures built to accommodate Riefenstahl’s many cameramen. See T. Burden, Nuremberg
Party Rallies, 95–97. Linda Schulte-Sasse also discusses the event’s being “staged for the very purpose of
being ilmed.” Entertaining the hird Reich, 19.
46. he party rallies in Nuremberg, which began in 1923, changed over the years, but all the key elements were in place by the party congress of 1934.
47. François-Poncet, Souvenirs d’une ambassade, 267–69.
48. According to Richard Griiths, certain British freelance journalists who were invited to attend the
Nuremberg party rallies were also paid by Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry to write enthusiastic articles
about the events for British publications. hey included Cliford Sharp from the New Statesman, Graham
Seton Hutchinson, and James Murphy, who was also responsible for translating Mein Kampf into English.
One might speculate that similar arrangments were made with French journalists, but I have not come
across any evidence to support this. Richard Griiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right (London: Constable:
1980), 112.
49. Louis Bertrand, “Hitler et l’Allemagne d’aujourd’hui,” Je Suis Partout, 1 February 1936, 7.
50. Louis Bertrand, Hitler (Paris: A. Fayard, 1936), 61.
51. Robert Brasillach, “Cent heures chez Hitler,” La Revue Universelle, October 1937, 55–73. Reprinted
in Notre avant-guerre (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1941), 232–40. Brasillach subsequently used his journalistic
accounts of the Nuremberg rallies as material for his novel Les sept couleurs (1939). In this novel, a character
named Patrice, who is serving as head of the French Chamber of Commerce in Nuremberg, describes how
emotionally overwhelmed he felt at the rallies. See Mary Jean Green, Fiction in the Historical Present (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1986), 163–68.
52. Chateaubriant, “Nouvelle Allemagne,” 83–84.
53. Ludovic Naudeau, “Les journées de Nuremberg,” L’Illustration, 17 September 1938, 58–62. he
circulation of L’Illustration, which appealed to a conservative, bourgeois readership, ranged from 140,000
to over 200,000 during the 1930s. Under Vichy, the magazine was collaborationist, which led to its being
banned in September 1944. Jean-Noël Marchandiau, L’Illustration (Toulouse: Bibliothèque Historique
Privat, 1977).
54. Waldemar George, L’humanisme et l’idée de patrie (Paris: Fasquelle, 1936), 144.
55. Ibid., 141–42.
56. Ibid., 165.
57. “Discours prononcé par M. Jacques Viénot, Président de la classe 71, à la cérémonie de la pose du
premier clou de pavillon de l’art des fêtes,” in Labbé, Exposition Internationale, 7:449–50.
58. J. J. Jallot, “Les fêtes à l’Exposition internationale de 1937: Groupe XIII, Classe 71,” Notre Revue,
April 1937. Archives Nationales, Paris, press clipping, F12 12137.
59. Labbé, “Groupe XIII: Fêtes, attractions, cortèges, sports,” in Exposition Internationale, 7:233–34.
60. “Exposition Internationale Paris 1937: Décors et matériel de Fêtes,” lyer (Impr. Nationale, J. 1513–
37), Departement des Estampes et de la Photographie, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
61. Jacques Vienot, “Allocution à l’inauguration du pavillon de l’art des fêtes,” in Labbé, Exposition Internationale, 7:457.
62. Labbé, Exposition Internationale, 7:256. In 1936 Speer used 150 searchlights visible to a height of
eight kilometers (roughly 25,000 feet). Speer employed the same military technology to light the stadium
at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
63. Jacques Tournant, “Élements et décors de fêtes,” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui, September 1938, 89.
Rosi Huhn has more recently drawn the comparison between Speer’s Lichtdom and the dramatic lighting
of the Eifel Tower. See her short article “Art et technique: La Lumière,” in Cinquantenaire de l’Exposition
internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne (Paris: Institut français d’architecture and ParisMusées, 1987), 396–97. See also Amélie Granet, “Les illuminations de la tour Eifel” in the same volume,
410–13.
64. Gaston Poulain, “Naissance d’une tradition: Les Fêtes populaires du 14 juillet,” Beaux-Arts, 23 July
1937, 1, 4.
65. Beaudouin, “Mystiques et espaces,” 93.
66. René Mestais, “Terrains nus, terrains batis,” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui, June 1937, 25–35.
67. Jacques Vienot, “Fêtes publiques,” L’ Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui, September 1938, 79–81.
68. Gaston Bardet’s ideas on urban planning were inspired by the work of both Patrick Geddes and
Lewis Mumford. He published numerous studies including Problèmes d’urbanisme (Paris: Dunod, 1941)
and Le nouvel urbanisme (1948); the latter was recently reissued with a preface by Marcel Roncayolo (Paris:
Editions de la Villette, 2000). Bardet also gained notoriety with his study La Roma di Mussolini (Paris:
Charles Massin, 1937), in which he celebrates the Italian leader’s urban development program.
69. Gaston Bardet, “La foule actrice et spectatrice,” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’Hui, September 1938,
92—93. Ater the war Bardet republished this article in his book Pierre sur Pierre: Construction du nouvel
urbanisme (Paris: Éditions L.C.B. Section bâtiment, 1945).
70. Le Corbusier, Des canons, des munitions? Merci! Des logis . . . svp: Monographie du Pavillon des Temps
Nouveaux à l’Exposition de Paris 1937 (Boulogne-sur-Seine, France: Éditions de L’Architecture d’Ajourd’Hui,
1938), 99. For a discussion of Le Corbusier’s stadium in the context of the 1937 exposition and French
politics of the period, see Danilo Udovicki-Selb, “Le Corbusier and the Paris Exhibition of 1937: he
Temps Nouveaux Pavilion,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 56, no. 1 (March 1997): 42–63;
and Jean-Louis Cohen, “Architectures du Front populaire,” Le Mouvement Social 146 ( January-March
1989): 49–59.
71. Denis Hollier, “On Equivocation (Between Literature and Politics),” October 55 (Winter 1990):
3–22.
252
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253
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Notes
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72. Bataille, “Psychological Structure of Fascism,” 87.
73. Brenkman, “Introduction to Bataille,” 59.
74. Georges Bataille, “Counterattack: Call to Action,” October 36 (Spring 1986): 27. Contre-Attaque
was an extreme-letist group founded by Bataille and André Breton in 1936. he texts discussed here are
part of the manifesto Bataille published in the journal of the short-lived organization, which took the same
name. See Denis Hollier, “A Farewell to the Pen,” Raritan 12, no. 1 (Summer 1992): 52–53.
75. Georges Bataille, “Additional Notes on the War,” October 36 (Spring 1986): 30–31.
76. Georges Bataille, “Toward Real Revolution,” October 36 (Spring 1986): 32–41.
77. Andrew Hewitt, Fascist Modernism: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Avant-Garde (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 192.
EI P loG u E
1. Robert Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1972), 61.
2. Ibid., 51.
3. Ibid., 51, 58.
4. Only twice did Hitler briely consider French proposals, in October-December 1940 and again in
May 1941, when France’s holdings in North Africa were attractive to the German military campaign in the
region (the failed Franco-German agreement was known as the Protocols of Paris).
5. Jackson, France: he Dark Years, 172–89; Paxton, Vichy France, 387–90.
6. Stanley Hofman, “he Vichy Circle of French Conservatives,” (1956), reprinted in S. Hofman,
Decline or Renewal? France since the 1930s (New York: Viking, 1974); cited in Jackson, France: he Dark
Years, 11.
7. Jackson, France: he Dark Years, 24.
8. Ibid., 135–36.
9. For a detailed account of Vichy’s role in the extermination of the Jews, see Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1981). See also Susan Zuccotti, he Holocaust, the French, and the Jews (New York: Basic Books, 1993), which covers Vichy persecution as well as
eforts by individual French people to save Jewish lives.
10. Burrin, France under the Germans, 342, 373.
11. Ibid., 53.
12. Jackson, France: he Dark Years, 146; Paxton, Vichy France, 133.
13. Burrin, France under the Germans, 324.
14. Ibid., 325.
15. he PA was headed by Major Heinz Schmidtke. Denis Peschanski, “Une politique de la censure?” in
La vie culturelle sous Vichy, ed. Jean-Pierre Rioux, 170–71 (Paris: Éditions Complexe, 1990), 66. Jackson,
France: he Dark Years.
16. hese comments were addressed to Fernand Brinon, one of the most inluential members of the
Comité France-Allemagne and now Vichy’s delegate to the MBF. Quoted in Burrin, France under the Germans, 348.
17. Adjutantur der Wehrmacht beim Führer, March 31, 1942; quoted in Burrin, France under the Germans, 325.
18. Cone, Artists under Vichy, 325. Cone adds that cultural diversion also served as a “smokescreen” for
the Holocaust. She notes that while Parisians locked to the much-anticipated Arno Breker exhibit in the
summer of 1942, the Gestapo’s roundup at Vel d’Hiv stadium of twenty thousand Jews for deportation was
also taking place. Cone, Artists under Vichy, 164.
19. In counting Abetz’s staf, I am including the embassy staf of 222 as well as the additional 568 em-
ployed by services attached to the embassy. Burrin, France under the Germans, 91; Jackson, France: he
Dark Years, 199.
20. Jackson, France: he Dark Years, 171.
21. Barbara Lambauer, Otto Abetz et les rançais, ou l’envers de la Collaboration (Paris: Fayard, 2001),
178.
22. Memorandum by Abetz, 30 July 1940, Centre de documentation juive contemporaine, Procès
Abetz. Quoted in Michèle Cointet and Jean-Paul Cointet, eds., Dictionnaire historique de la France sous
l’Occupation (Paris: Tallandier, 2000).
23. Lambauer, Otto Abetz et les rançais, 142–48.
24. Burrin, France under the Germans, 93.
25. Lambauer, Otto Abetz et les rançais, 178.
26. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 6.
27. Lambauer, Otto Abetz et les rançais, 197.
28. Marrus and Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, 82–83.
29. Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 23–24. For a more detailed history of Abetz’s involvement in
the sacking of French collections, see Lambauer, Otto Abetz et les rançais, 151–65, and Hector Feliciano,
Le musée disparu: Enquête sur le pillage des oeuvres d’art en France par les Nazis (Paris: Austral, 1995).
30. Joseph, Fernand de Brinon, 234–35.
31. Jackson, France: he Dark Years, 171, 309.
32. Lambauer, Otto Abetz et les rançais, 721.
33. Otto Abetz, Das Ofene Problem: Ein Rückblick auf zwei jahrzehnte Deutscher Frankreichpolitik (Cologne: Greven Verlag, 1951), 356.
34. Ibid., 319. See also Lambauer, Otto Abetz et les rançais, 680.
35. Floriot quoted in Lambauer, Otto Abetz et les rançais, 687.
36. Ibid., 698, 703.
37. Burrin, France under the Germans, 292.
38. he Propaganda-Abteilung followed this with sponsorship of another large exhibit, “Bolshevism
against Europe,” which was also organized by a French group, the Comité d’action anti-bolchévique, under
the leadership of Paul Chack. his exhibit also toured, attracting a total of 700,000 visitors. Ibid., 294–95.
39. Ibid., 293–94.
40. Ibid., 177–90. See also Pierre Laborie, L’opinion sous Vichy, 2nd ed. (Paris: Seuil, 2001).
41. Abetz founded another agency to deal with more mass forms of propaganda, the InformationsAbteilung (Information Division), directed by Rudolf Rahn.
42. Vichy attempted to set up a French counterpart to the German Institute in Berlin in order to assure
the reciprocity of cultural collaboration. When Abel Bonnard become minister of national education, the
plan metamorphosed into a Comité Culturel Franco-Européen intended to promote exchanges between
universities and to establish a Franco-German lycée. As Burrin notes, these plans were never realized since
“nothing could have been further from the conquerors’ plans.” See Burrin, France under the Germans, 352.
43. Eckard Michels, Das Deutsche Institute in Paris 1940–1944 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1993),
249–50. Philippe Burrin estimates that the series attracted as many as ity thousand attendees during the
occupation. See Burrin, France under the Germans, 298.
44. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Regards sur l’histoire: Cahiers de l’Institut allemand, vol. 2 (Paris: Fernand
Sorlot, 1941). See Pascal Ory, Les collaborateurs, 1940–1945 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1976), 55, 275.
45. All totaled, at least thirty thousand people received a German-language education at one of these
schools. Burrin, France under the Germans, 301–2. See also Lambauer, Otto Abetz et les rançais, 240–41.
46. Burrin, France under the Germans, 304.
47. Lambauer, Otto Abetz et les rançais, 240; Burrin, France under the Germans, 326–27. See also Pas-
254
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255
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Notes
::
cal Fouché, L’Édition rançaise sous l’Occupation (Paris: Bibliothèque de literature française contemporaine
de l’université Paris VII, 1987). Publishers made the censorship work of the Propaganda-Abteilung easy
by voluntarily providing it with the titles of works that might prove ofensive to the occupying regime—a
register known as the Otto list. he publishers thereby agreed to a protocol of self-censorship: they would
respect the Otto list and would not publish any work that had been banned in Germany or that might be
detrimental to German interests. Many of them went further than this, actively seeking out contracts to
publish Nazi propaganda and collaborationist works.
48. Michels, Das Deutsche Institute in Paris, 77; and Lambauer, Otto Abetz et les rançais, 241.
49. Gisèle Sapiro, La guerre des écrivains, 1940–1953 (Paris: Fayard, 1999), 36–39, 44–47. Jackson,
France: he Dark Years, 200–201, 205–9. See also Pierre Hebey, La “Nouvelle Revue Française” des années
sombres, juin 1940 à juin 1941: Des intellectuals à la dérive (Paris: Gallimard, 1992). Abetz also developed
close ties with other publications predisposed toward the hird Reich, including Déat’s L’Oeuvre, Doriot’s
Le Cri du People, and the weeklies L’Illustration, Je Suis Partout, and Au Pilori. See halmann, La mise au
pas, 139.
50. Lambauer, Otto Abetz et les rançais, 241–2; Jackson, France: he Dark Years, 201.
51. Burrin, France under the Germans, 407; Lambauer, Otto Abetz et les rançais, 243.
52. Bertram M. Gordon, Collaborationism in France during the Second World War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1980), 230–43; and Ory, Les collaborateurs, 64.
53. Burrin, France under the Germans, 409; Lambauer, Otto Abetz et les rançais, 241–42.
54. Cone, Artists under Vichy, 161.
55. François-Poncet to Delbos, 4 June 1938, AD Berlin C 121.
56. Petropoulos, Faustian Bargain, 23, 233–34.
57. Jean Cocteau, “Salut à Breker,” Comœdia, 23 May 1942.
58. he pieces were fabricated in France because metal casting was prohibited in Germany ater 1940
due to the war efort. See Petropoulos, Faustian Bargain, 234–35.
59. he book by Charles Despiau was published by Flammarion in 1942. See the review of the Breker
exhibit by Pierre D’Espezel, “Arno Breker ou le Triomphe de la Jeunesse,” Je Suis Partout, 23 May 1942, and
Despiau’s own articles in Comœdia, 16 and 23 May 1942, and in L’Illustration, 16 May 1942.
60. Cone, Artists under Vichy, 158.
61. he thirteen artists on the trip were Paul Belmondo, Henri Bouchard, André Derain, Charles Despiau, Cornelis Van Dongen, Othon Friesz, Jean Janin, Paul Landowski, Raymond-Jean Legueult, Lejeune,
Roland Oudot, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, and Maurice Vlaminck. Aristide Maillol did not go because
of his age, and Maurice Denis declined. Bertrand Dorleac, L’art de la défaite, 74–79.
62. Petropoulos, Faustian Bargain, 237; Cone, Artists under Vichy, 155–57.
63. Henri Bouchard, “La vie de l’artiste dans l’Allemagne actuelle,” L’Illustration, 7 February 1942,
85–88.
64. Maximillien Gauthier, “Impresssions d’Allemagne: Chez Dunoyer de Segonzac,” Comœdia, 29 November 1941, 9.
65. Maximillien Gauthier, “Impresssions d’Allemagne: Chez Charles Despiau,” Comœdia, 29 November
1941, 9.
66. Cone, Artists under Vichy, 155.
67. Ory, Les collaborateurs, 62.
68. Among these coproductions made in Germany were Danielle Darrieux and Albert Préjean in Le
contrôleur des wagons-lits (1935), Darrieux in Un mauvais garçon (1936), René Dary in S.O.S. Sahara and
Un ichu métier, Junie Astor in Noix de coco, and Viviane Romance in Le joueur, all from 1938. See Bessy
and Chirat, Histoire du cinema rançais; and Courtade, “Les coproductions franco-allemandes,” 180.
69. Ehrlich, Cinema of Paradox, 16–22.
70. Greven’s grudge against Marcel Carné is one example. Carné initially signed a contract to work for
Continental but fell out with Greven during the preproduction work on an adaptation of Jacques Spitz’s
Les evades de l’an 4000. he ilm was canceled, and Greven made it diicult for Carné to work in the occupied zone. See Edward Turk, Child of Paradise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989),
184–86.
71. he theaters were coniscated by the Germans from the prominent Siritsky and Haik chains. he
German decrees of 24 August and 9 September 1940 made it possible for Greven, with the help of Richard
Ehrt of ACE and M. Langenscheidt of Tobis, to take possession of the theaters. Ehrlich, Cinema of Paradox, 44; and Garçon, De Blum à Pétain, 32. See also Kreimeier, UFA Story, 335.
72. Jacques Durand, Le cinema et son public (Paris: Éd. Sirey, 1958), 209; cited in François Garçon, “Ce
curieux âge d’or des cinéastes français,” in La vie culturelle de Vichy, ed. Jean-Pierre Rioux, 308–9 (Paris:
Éditions Complexe, 1990).
73. Ehrlich, Cinema of Paradox, 39–40.
74. MBF report November 1, 1940, quoted in halmann, Las mise au pas, 186.
75. See the German memorandum concerning these negotiations quoted in Ehrlich, Cinema of Paradox,
152–53.
76. Ibid., xii.
77. Jeancolas, 15 ans d’annés trente, preface.
78. Ibid., 298. Naomi Greene takes issue with this analysis and argues that Vichy cinema did indeed
have qualities that distinguish it from the previous decade. She claims that ilm critics have privileged diegesis over other ilmic aspects, thus missing formal factors that contributed to a diferent “black mood,”
a “regard de cruauté,” evident in Vichy ilms. See Naomi Greene, “Mood and Ideology in the Cinema of
Vichy France,” French Review 59, no. 3 (February 1986): 437–45.
79. Garçon, De Blum à Petain, 196.
80. Jackson, France: he Dark Years, 321.
81. Ehrlich, Cinema of Paradox, 52–54.
82. J. Siclier, La France de Pétain et son cinéma, cited by Jackson in France: he Dark Years, 323; Ehrlich,
Cinema of Paradox, 50–51, 177–88.
83. Ehrlich, Cinema of Paradox, 55.
84. Ibid., 13–37.
85. Jean-Pierre Bertin-Maghit’s Le cinéma sous l’Occupation (Paris: Olivier Orban, 1989), cited by Denis
Peschanski in his chapter “Une politique de la censure?” 68.
86. he exception were a few ilms by directors such as Abel Gance, Pierre Billon, and Pagnol. See Ehrlich, Cinema of Paradox, 36.
87. Faure, Le projet culturel de Vichy, 156.
88. Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, 156.
89. Faure, Le projet culturel de Vichy, 93–104.
90. Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 125–29.
91. Faure, Le projet culturel de Vichy, 156; Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, 155.
92. Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, 160.
93. Bertrand Dorléac, L’art de la défaite, 155–68.
94. Rémi Dalisson, Les fêtes du maréchal: Propagande et imaginaire dans la France de Vichy (Paris: Tallandier, 2007), 131.
95. “La celebration du 1er mai, fête du travail,” L’Illustration, 10 May 1941, 66.
96. Eric T. Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics: Pétain’s National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and
Indochina, 1940–1944 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 204–5.
97. Sarah Fishman, “Youth in Vichy France: he Juvenile Crime Wave and Its Implications,” in Sarah
256
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257
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Notes
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Fishman et al., France at War: Vichy and the Historians (Oxford: Berg, 2000), 205. See also Dalisson, Les
fêtes du maréchal, 163.
98. Faure, Le projet culturel de Vichy, 178; Jackson, France: he Dark Years, 149.
99. Ibid., 177–80.
100. Ibid., 187–92.
101. Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics, 217–18.
102. Telegram of 28 August 1941, quoted in ibid., 210. For a detailed description of the ceremonies at
Gergovia, see Dalisson, Les fêtes du maréchal, 183–92.
103. Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics, 211.
104. “Les cérémonies de Gergovie,” L’Illustration, 12 September 1942, 174.
105. Jackson, France: he Dark Years, 234–35.
bi b li ogrA p h y
a r C HI V Es a n d Co l l E C TI o n s
Akademie der Künste, Berlin
Archives Diplomatiques de Nantes
Archives du Ministère des Afaires Etrangères, Paris
Archives Nationales, Paris
Bayerischen Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich
Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine, Nanterre
Bibliothèque du Film, Cinematheque Française, Paris
Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France, Paris
Bibliothèque et Archives des Musées Nationaux, Musée du Louvre, Paris
Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
Bundesarchiv, Koblenz and Abteilungen Potsdam (now Abteilung Berlin)
Centre National de la Cinématographie, Paris
Deutsche Kinemathek, Museum für Film und Fernsehen, Berlin
Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, Palo Alto
Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress,
Washington, DC
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD
Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Bonn (now Berlin)
n EWsPa P Er s an d P E r I o d J o u r n a l s
1933 [later 1934 and 1935]: he Magazine of Today
Almanach Ciné-Miroir
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Bulletin, Société Philanthropique de Berlin
Cahiers d’Art
Cahiers Radio-Paris
Candide
Ce Soir
Ciné-Journal
Ciné-Miroir
Cinématographie Française
Cinémonde
Combat
Comœdia
Das 12 Uhr Blatt
Das Neue Tagebuch
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