From Vichy to Algiers (response article)

Philippe Pétain and Charles de Gaulle certainly occupy central positions in the history of contemporary France. The former is associated with the momentous victory at Verdun in February 1916, and more ominously symbolizes the authoritarian and xenophobic Vichy regime that emerged following the German victory in June 1940. Intimately tied to the Pétainist moment, de Gaulle’s ascendancy began with his formation of the Free French as a bulwark against Vichy. Seemingly discredited by the failure of the post-liberation RPF (Rally of the French People) in 1952, he returned for a “second rendezvous with historical destiny,” to use Michel Winock’s phrase, inaugurating the Fifth Republic and effectively ending the Algerian crisis during and after May 1958.

Rudolph Binion’s examination of the tumultuous end of the Fourth Republic proposes another dimension to the centrality of Pétain and de Gaulle to the French Twentieth century: that the crisis which vaulted the General to power represented an “unconscious replay” by French politicians of the traumatic events of June-July 1940 during which his nemesis emerged as the leader of l’État français. Binion further alleges that he played the part of the maréchal (marshal), “while refusing to acknowledge Pétain as his source.” As a result, an “inward impulsion” propelled historical actors and circumstances during the 1958 crisis that ended in the return of de Gaulle to power and the formation of the Fifth Republic.

The Pétain-de Gaulle analogy is thought provoking, and Binion fittingly notes the numerous similarities between the two men. In 1940 and 1958, they benefited from traumatic crises that engendered intense political spectacles, concluding with the anointment of a charismatic outsider. In agreement with Réne Rémond, he observes that Pétain and de Gaulle were acknowledged as mythical saviors, reputations garnered due to the military triumphs of Verdun and the liberation successively (Réne Rémond, “Two Destinies: De Gaulle and Pétain” in Hugh Gough and John Horne (eds.), De Gaulle and Twentieth Century France [London: Edward Arnold, 1994], pp. 9-17). Furthermore, both men despised party politics, and parlayed their moral authority into popular and political support for the creation of a new regime. Last, but certainly not least, Binion references their monumental egoism. The two consistently referred to themselves in transcendental terms, evident in Pétain’s public discourse and de Gaulle’s frequent use of the third person in speeches and his memoirs.

These observations raise excellent questions about the nature of, and relationship between, both men. Yet beyond surface similarities, the comparison is somewhat difficult to sustain due to genuine qualitative differences between the two series of events and their beneficiaries. First and foremost, although Pétain and de Gaulle disparaged the Third and Fourth Republics respectively, they based their conclusions on entirely different rationale. Vichy in many ways represents the concluding chapter of the Guerre franco-française, Charles Maurras’s “divine surprise” which eliminated the hated Third Republic in favor of an authoritarian state dedicated to moral and spiritual renewal, anti-Semitism, corporatism, and the cult of the soil. Although certain figures proposed alternatives to extreme-rightist values, most notably the young technocrats in charge of industrial planning, Pétain dismissed their conclusions. His Vichy harkened back to the philosophy of Maurice Barrès and the leagues of the 1930s—the slogan “work, family, fatherland” was first used by the

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Croix de Feu, which Pétain termed “one of the most healthy elements in our country.” He derided bourgeois decadence, weak and ineffective parliamentary democracy, and the declining birthrate that brought France to the edge of the abyss; “intellectual and moral retraining” and a new politico-economic order would remove such impediments.

Far from imitating Pétain, de Gaulle espoused the opposite conviction: that the Republic should be altered but preserved. To be sure, he possessed a penchant for Bonapartism, and his constitutional reforms strengthened the executive at the expense of the National Assembly. In his Bayeux speech on 16 June 1946 and subsequently as the leader of the RPF, de Gaulle frequently dismissed the “regime of political parties” (and particularly the communist PCF), insisting upon direct communication between the President and the population through elections and referenda. But for all that, democracy remained the procedural élan vital of the Fifth Republic, and parliament retained significant responsibilities. Not only was the President elected by universal suffrage, but the party system and personal liberties remained critical components of the new regime. Neither did de Gaulle’s nationalism devolve into Vichyisme. His government welcomed all political, religious, and social groups without exception. How different from Pétain in 1940, who never delivered the promised new constitution and paid mere lip service to representative institutions, placing the blame for French misfortunes squarely on the Judeo-Republican “other.”

Similar problems arise with the contention that de Gaulle manipulated events in order to eradicate the Fourth Republic, just as Pétain harnessed the June 1940 military debacle to identical ends. It is true that the Marshal fortuitously benefited from the success of the Blitzkrieg. For as William Irvine writes, the Third Republic “in four years managed to parry the forces of domestic fascism, integrate the working class into the nation, rally the bulk of the obdurate Right, all the while rearming the nation” (William D. Irvine, “Domestic Politics and the Fall of France in 1940,” Historical Reflections 22 [1/1996]: pp. 77-90). Were it not for flawed military planning and concomitant defeat, which resulted in shock and humiliation, dislocation and confusion, the “divine surprise” seems a very remote possibility indeed.

Pétain, Pierre Laval, and Maxime Weygand actively opposed Premier Paul Reynaud, practically forcing his resignation on 16 June, and then awaited the parliamentary capitulation that culminated in the secession of power. It is crucial to note that the decision to seek armistice terms, dissolve the Republic and grant full powers to Pétain were voluntary. No fascist threat existed in Bordeaux or Vichy, the Nazis never demanded the elimination of the Third Republic, and the army did not plan a coup attempt. The argument that fear caused both the cessation of hostilities and the dissolution of the republican regime was originated by Léon Blum to explain the decisions of June-July 1940, and later used (for obvious reasons) by Pierre Laval and other collaborators to justify their actions. Yet Jacques Doriot had only a few dozen men at best in either city in June 1940, and the units stationed in Clermont-Ferrand were too few to possibly effectuate such a plot. Naturally, the Germans did not care about “regime change”—they simply wanted France out of the war (Jean-Pierre Azéma, From Munich to the Liberation, 1938-1944 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984], pp. 36-49; Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944 [NY: Columbia University Press, 1982], pp. 3-50; Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001], pp. 112-136). This provides quite a contrast to May 1958, when the Fourth Republic faced a direct threat from the Algerian rebels and Operation Resurrection, which succeeded in taking Corsica and next targeted the métropole, although they had not yet sent paratroopers to Paris.

In fact, de Gaulle did not “use the 1958 Algerian crisis to destroy the Fourth Republic.” Instead, as Anthony Hartley asserts: “The Fourth Republic was not so much murdered as pronounced dead on arrival” (Anthony Hartley, Gaullism: The Rise and Fall of a Political Movement [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972], p. 135). It is true that the French economy improved dramatically by 1958, as wages rose 40% after 1949, and the Schuman Plan inaugurated a trade surplus and long-term prosperity, in stark contrast to the shortages and rationing of the immediate

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postwar era. But governmental instability remained acute, with 24 failed ministries from January 1946 onwards, and in the radio-television age the entire population bore witness to such foibles. Nor could the deadlock be broken, because of the “Hexagonal Chamber.” The National Assembly split into six factions, each containing 90-120 seats, necessitating shaky coalitions that broke down in a matter of weeks or months, and no leader emerged to forge national unity during the opening stages of the Algerian war, as Édouard Daladier managed to do in 1938. By the time of de Gaulle’s return, there existed no comparable force in French politics, capable of resolving the political and colonial gridlock. Thus Algeria became the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, and far from succumbing to de Gaulle’s manipulations, the Fourth Republic summarily collapsed under its own weight.

Finally, the argument that de Gaulle and the National Assembly “contrive[d] to relive the panicked surrender by the government and parliament of June-July 1940” is slightly off target. Neither the General nor the authorities conspired to foment the military rebellion, despite the presence of Gaullists like Jacques Soustelle among the insurgents. In fact, the Algerian problem predated the Fourth Republic altogether. Caught between the demographic imbalance of the Muslim and European populations on one hand, and the intransigence of those of European descent in North Africa regarding the extension of rights and freedoms to indigenous inhabitants on the other, relations between the colony and the métropole began to deteriorate after the Great War. By the 1930s, well before the Algerian war and the crisis of 1958, the extreme-right found a willing audience among the locals. Jacques Doriot’s Parti populaire français garnered 7,000 adherents in the department of Oran alone, buoyed by the 1936 Blum-Viollette proposal to increase the number of eligible Muslim voters. The Croix de Feu/Parti social français similarly attracted crowds of thousands when Colonel de la Rocque spoke in Algeria (Archives d’Outre-Mer, GGA 3CAB/100, Report–23 July 1937; GGA 3CAB/47, Report–July 1935; Constantine B/3/635, 3 July 1937, “Parti social français”). Such European intransigence fuelled indigenous anger: it is no coincidence that the popularity of separatists like Messali Hadj and a variety of movements envisioning either radical reform or the disintegration of the colonial relationship soared at this time. Worse still, when the French government finally offered token advancement in March 1944, allowing 65 000 Muslims the right to vote, it simultaneously entrenched political inequality. Unsurprisingly, even the moderate voice of Ferhat Abbas rejected the deal. Subsequently, amid the postwar climate of decolonization and the 1954 defeat of French forces at Dien Ben Phu, the National Liberation Front declared its insurrection.

Such long-term trends explain why “little by little, as they kept pledging to keep Algeria French, successive French governments lost faith with all concerned including themselves.” Michel Winock notes that the death knell of the Fourth Republic actually sounded on 6 February 1956, when socialist Prime Minister Guy Mollet confronted an angry mob in Algiers, who understood all too well that he proposed to do in Algeria what Pierre Mendès-France had accomplished in Indochina, ending the problem-riddled colonial drama once and for all (Michel Winock, La République se meurt: 1956-1958 [Paris, Seuil, 1985], chapter one). Although he paid lip service to the notion of “French Algeria,” de Gaulle also realized that such an antiquated notion could not survive in the era of decolonization, and instead demanded a new form of association during the 4 June 1958 speech in Algiers.

Hence instead of an “unconscious replay,” the May 1958 crisis conforms to a recurring pattern in French history, in which national emergencies initiate breaks with past political traditions, a phenomenon equally apparent after the revolution of 1848 with the emergence of Napoleon III, in 1871 with the birth of the Third Republic under Adolphe Thiers following the disastrous Franco-Prussian War, and even Clemenceau’s ascension in 1917 during the Great War (René Rémond, 1958, Le Retour de De Gaulle [Paris: Éditions Complexe, 1998], pp. 146-148). Perhaps the most unique variant in 1958 is the limited nature of the emergency powers granted under Article 16, which placed a six-month term on de Gaulle’s extra-parliamentary authority and demanded genuine constitutional revision within a republican framework. Pétain and Vichy operated under no such limitations.

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In the final analysis, then, there existed no “inward compulsion” to relive a prior trauma. Instead, the disastrous political failure of the Fourth Republic, combined with the agony of decolonization (itself the product of long-term historical trends) and the threat of armed intervention from Algiers, vaulted De Gaulle to power. This is not to imply a condemnation of psycho-historical theory and practice in general, and certainly not the prolific and highly influential work of Rudolph Binion, but merely to state that in this narrow instance the argument presented does not correspond to the larger historical picture.

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