RESISTANCE AGAINST FASCISM

Carolyn Moorehead, A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France (New York: Harper, 2011) ("On 16 June, Paul Reynaud, the Prime Minister who had presided over the French government's flight from Paris to Tours and then to Bordeaux, resigned, handing power over to the much-loved hero of Verdun, Marshal Petain. At 12.30 on the 17th, Petain, his thin, crackling voice reminding Arthur Koestler of a 'Skeleton with a chill', announced over the radio that he was asking Germany for an armistice. The French people, he said, were to 'cease fighting' and to cooperate with the German authorities. 'Have confidence in the German soldier! read posters that soon appeared on every wall." Id. at 14. "The French government came to rest in Vichy, a fashionable spa on the right bank of the river Allier in the Auvergne. Here, Petain and his chief minister, the appeaser and pro-German Pierre Laval, set about putting in place a new French state. On paper at least, it was not a German puppet but a legal, sovereign state with diplomatic relations. During the rapid German advance, some 100,000 French soldiers had been killed in action, 200,000 wounded and 1.8 million others were now making their way into captivity in prisoner-of-war camps in Austria and Germany, but a new France was to rise out of the ashes of the old. 'Follow me,' declared Petain: 'keep your faith in La France Eternelle'. Petain was 84 years old. Those who preferred not to follow him scrambled to leave France--over the border to Spain and Switzerland or across the Channel--and began to group together as the Free French with French nationals from the African colonies who had argued against a negotiated surrender to Germany." "In this France envisaged by Petain and his Catholic, conservative, authoritarian and often anti-Semitic followers, the country would be purged and purified, returned to a mythical golden age before the French revolution introduced perilous ideas about equality. The new French were to respect their superiors and the values of discipline hard work and sacrifice and they were to shun the decadent individualism that had, together with Jews, Freemasons, trade unionists, immigrants, gypsies and communists, contributed to the military defeat of the country." Id. at 15. "One of the reasons given by Petain for the defeat of France in 1940 was the severe lack of French children. Young women, he complained, had had their heads turned by seeing too many American films, and by being told by the Front Populaire that there was no reason why they could not study to become lawyers and doctors like their brothers Under a law of 1938, French girls had been permitted to enrol in universities, open their own bank accounts, sign and receive cheques and have their own passports." "Petain intended to reverse this heady spirit of freedom, and, without an Assembly to hinder him, set about putting through a series of edicts and statutes aimed at strengthening what he saw as the degenerate moral fabric of France. contraception had been declared illegal in the wake of the huge losses in the first World War, and would remain so, but now the penalties against abortion, and particularly abortionists, were strengthened to include the guillotine, Women who continued to breastfeed their babies beyond the age of one were given priority cards for queues (providing the baby was legitimate and French). Mothers of five children were presented a bronze medal, then a silver with the fifth and a gold with the tenth. Dozens of Vichy babies acquired Petain as their godfather. Families were declared to be 'patriotic'; to remain single was to be decadent." Id. at 43. Listen to Fox News and you will hear the rants of numerous American Petains; or, for that matter, read some opinions and statements of certain member of the current United States Supreme Court. There is, in earlier twenty-first-century America, a strong pull towards a conservative, authoritarian, anti-unions, anti-immigrants, anti-liberalism, anti-equality, anti-nonchristian, anti-individual, anti-critical thinking, anti-intellectual American and ant-women. From the bookjacket: "They were teachers, students, chemists writers, and housewives; a singer at the Paris Opera, a mid-wife, a dental surgeon. They distributed ant0Nazi leaflets, printed subversive newspapers, hid resisters, secreted Jews to safety, transported weapons, and conveyed clandestine messages. The youngest was a schoolgirl of fifteen who scrawled 'V' for victory on the walls of her lycee; the eldest, a farmer's wife in her sixties who harbored escaped Allied airmen. Stranger to each other, hailing from villages and cities from across France, these brave women were united in hatred and defiance of the Nazi occupiers." "Eventually, the Gestapo hunted down 230 of these women and imprisoned the in a fort outside Paris. Separated from home and loved ones, these disparate individuals turned to one another their common experience conquering divisions of age, education profession, and class, as they found solace and strength in their deep affection and camaraderie." "In January 1943, they were sent to their final destination: Auschwitz. Only forty0nine would return to France." Who will resist the new American fascism when the occupier is an internal enemy? Also see Caroline Weber, "Sisters Unto Death," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 11/13/2011.).