James Herbst The Politics of Apoliticism James Herbst The Politics of Apoliticism Political Trials in Vichy France, 1940–1942 ISBN 978-3-11-060721-5 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-061016-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-060743-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 2018965087 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: A diagram of the seating arrangements at the Supreme Court in Riom, unattribut- ed newspaper clipping, Box 23, Series GE, Archives d‘Histoire Contemporaine des Sciences Po. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com Contents  Introduction 1  “No other explanation seemed possible” 24  Certain ideas of France 39  Making Vichy’s Trials 63  Riom as National Revolution 86 The Evils of the Political 92 From Politics to Indiscipline 93 From Indiscipline to Hierarchy 96 From Hierarchy to Irresponsibility 97 From Irresponsibility Back to Politics 100 An Overarching Category: Leadership 101 Leadership and the Army 103 A Case Study: The Cunin Report 108  Reynaud, Mandel, Auriol: The Limits of Legalistic Apoliticism 111 Mandel and Reynaud 112 The Leca-Devaux Affair 117 The Conseil de Justice Politique 126 Honor/Dishonor 134 An Unsuccessful Prosecution of a Leftist: The Strange Case of Vincent Auriol 138  Riom as Parliament 142 The Newspapers and the Start of the Trial 143 The Newspapers and the Trial’s Failure 149 The Magistrates 152 Conclusion: The Suspension of Legal Norms 160  The Massilia Affair and the Clermont-Ferrand Desertion Trials 163 Differentiation of Sentencing 167 The Magistrates 168 Mendès France 170 Alex Wiltzer 175 VI Contents Jean Zay 182 Pierre Viénot 186  Conclusion 189 From Riom to Human Rights 195 Bibliography 203 Printed Sources 203 Newspapers 204 Secondary Sources 204 Index 209 1 Introduction Treasondothneverprosper,what’sthereason? Forifitprosper,nonedarecallittreason. ‒JohnHarington In1940,ameretwenty-twoyearsafterits admittedlyambiguoustriumph inthe Great War (1914–1918), the French Army experienced perhaps the most abrupt and total defeat ever suffered by a great power. Other great powers have been humbled in war with equal speed; Napoleon’s 1809 campaign against Austria comes to mind. Another such case was France itself in 1870. France then, how- ever,hadmanagedtoholdoutforanotheryear.Incontrast,the1940catastrophe was unique in its combination of rapidity and thoroughness. In six weeks, FrancewasreducedfromoneofEurope’stwoleadingmilitarypowers‒theSo- vietarmy,recentlyhumiliatedinFinland,waswidelyconsideredtobeofdoubt- ful quality ‒ to the status of a client state of Nazi Germany. It was the Third Reich’s only fully successful campaign against a great power. Within weeks, France had not only lost her independence but also her lib- erty. The collapse of French pluralism¹ was as drastic as her military defeat. Formuchofthenineteenthcentury,Francehadbeenabywordforrapidchanges ofregime.Alfred,LordTennyson,hadmockedthemforitinhis1847poemThe Princess,only ayear before France experiencedyet another short-lived shift to- wards democracy: Butyonder,whiff!therecomesasuddenheat, Thegravestcitizenseemstolosehishead, Thekingisscared,thesoldierwillnotfight, Thelittleboysbegintoshootandstab, Akingdomtopplesoverwithashriek Likeanoldwoman,anddownrollstheworld Inmockheroicsstrangerthanourown; Revolts,republics,revolutions,most Nograverthanaschoolboy’sbarringout. From 1875 on, however, France seemed to have settled on a durable pluralistic system. The Third Republic was prone to scandal and rapid cabinet turnover, but it seemed to be, as the former moderate monarchist Adolphe Thiers once  WomenwereforbiddenfromvotingundertheThirdRepublic,aswereMuslimAlgerians;but thereisnonethelessarealsenseinwhichFrancemovedfrompopulartoauthoritariangovern- mentunderVichy. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110610161-001 2 1 Introduction commented, the form of government that divided the French least.² In spite of the resurgence of political divisions in the 1930s, especially after the election of the left-wing Popular Front in 1936, most of the French continuedtosupport partiesespousingoneversionoranotherofrepublicanism.In1940,however,as theWehrmachtapproachedthefleeingFrenchparliament’snewheadquartersin Bordeaux, an overwhelming majority voted full powers to Marshal Philippe Pé- tain, France’s only living marshal and a national hero due to his record in the First World War. Pétain was to draw up a new constitution, and, apart from a provision that the result would have to be ratified by the Assembly (honored, as it proved, more in the breach than the observance), nothing guaranteed that the result would be democratic. Indeed, “the Marshal,” as he is still popu- larly known, promptly issued a series of “constitutional acts” that swept away the Republic and replaced it with an authoritarian regime inwhich he reserved allpowerforhimself.Thenewregimewouldbenamedafterthecitytowhichthe French government had moved after Bordeaux:Vichy. Even as the French Army continued to crumble, some political leaders still hoped to hold out in the reduit bréton (the Breton peninsula) or in France’s vast North African colonies. On June 22, however, Pétain signed an armistice agreement, a day after thirty parliamentarians had boarded the Casablanca- bound Massilia in the mistaken impression that the rest of the government would follow them. The Pétain government immediately portrayed this act as one of betrayal, as a panicked flight rather than as an attempt to continue the fight. Soon after, it began to seek to give this portrayal juridical form in the shape of the prosecution for desertion of four of the Massilia deputies: Jean Zay, Pierre Mendès France, Pierre Viénot and Alex Wiltzer. They were taken into custody on 31 August 1940. A month earlier, Pétain and Vichy’s Minister of Justice, Raphaël Alibert, had established a new court,the Cour Suprême (Su- premeCourt)atRiom,withjurisdictionoverformerministersandtheirimmedi- ate subordinates. Pétain, granted power by the same parliament that had launchedthePopularFrontgovernmentin1936,hadbeguntheprocessoftarget- ing prominent Popular Frontists for a trial at Riom, which was finally held in 1942. The interveningeighteenmonthshad notbeen encouragingfor thegovern- ment’sjudicialpolicy.ThreeoftheMassiliadeputies–Zay,MendèsFrance,and Viénot–weresuccessfullyprosecutedinthecourseof1940–41byamilitarytri- bunal at Clermont-Ferrand,but thiswas the extentof thegovernment’ssuccess  MichaelButler,Sellinga“Just”War:Framing,Legitimacy,andUSMilitaryIntervention(Basing- stoke:PalgraveMacmillan,2012),230. 1 Introduction 3 inprosecutingitsprecursors.Thesametribunal–indeed,thesamemagistrate– who convicted Zay and the other deputies refused even to indict former Prime Minister Paul Reynaud and his Minister of the Interior, Georges Mandel. The Riomtribunaldraggeditsfeetseeminglyinterminably,tothepointthatanimpa- tientPétainoverrodethewishes ofhisnewMinisterofJustice,JosephBarthéle- my (who had replaced Alibert in February 1941), and instituted a new hand- picked Conseil de Justice Politique to pass sentence on the Riom defendants. It dulydidsoonOctober15,1941,butthefactthattheRiomcourtcontinuedtode- liberatewasanindicationofhowlittlecredibilitytheConseil’sverdictpossessed, even at Vichy. Meanwhile, international events had also turned against Vichy.The regime was predicated on the assumption that the war was over and Britain would quickly capitulate or, in the famous words of Vichy’s Minister of National De- fense,MaximeWeygand,“haveitsnecktwistedlikeachicken’s.”³Neitheroccur- red.The establishment of the Cour Suprême had taken place in the wake of the British bombardment of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir on 3 July, 1940, and consequentlyatalowpointinFranco-Britishrelations;butFrenchopinioncon- tinuedtobelargelyfavorabletoaBritishvictory.⁴InJune1941,theBritishinva- sionofSyriabegantoremoveasecondcomponentofVichy’sself-legitimation– its continued possession of France’s colonies. A series of diplomatic initiatives throughout 1941 gradually brought the United States closer to participation in the war, and made the prospect of ultimate Germanvictory,which had seemed socertain in thesummerof1940, appeartorecedestillfurther.The German in- vasionoftheUSSRinJune1941,initiallyhighlysuccessful,hadboggeddownby theautumn.ByFebruary1942,whentheRiomcourtfinallyconvened,itwasno longer a triumphant initiative by the victors in France’s domestic quarrels so much as a desperate attempt to rescue the government’s crumbling legitimacy. It did not succeed in this goal.The Riom trial was a disaster for the Vichy government. Uniquely among show trials, it failed to result in a conviction, and the 1942 hearings were in fact so embarrassing to the regime that the trial had to be placed on what proved to be an indefinite hiatus.Tardy in its prepa- ration, the trial was also slow in its execution: by the time it was suspended, after a month and a half of hearings, only a minute fraction of the witnesses had been called. Bycontrast, Philippe Pétain’s own trialwouldtakeonly twen- ty-threedays(July23toAugust15,1945).The extraordinaryspectacle ofashow  MichaelCurtis,VerdictonVichy:PowerandPrejudiceintheVichyFranceRegime(NewYork: ArcadePublishing,2002),64.  PierreLaborie,L’OpinionFrançaisesousVichy(Paris:Seuil,1990),244. 4 1 Introduction trial that took a year and a half to prepare and failed to accomplish any of its goals demands explanation. This book will argue that the failure cannot be blamed on the way German demandsshapedthetrial,because,farfrombeingtheresultofforeignpressure, RiomwasfundamentallyaboutdomesticFrenchpolitics.TheGermaninterestin the trial was primarily about demonstrating that France and not Germany was responsible for the war, and it was they who summarily ended the trial when it proved not to consider the question of war guilt at all.This conflict between NaziandVichyviewsofwhatthetrialshouldaccomplishwasnotalast-minute development. From the beginning, Riom had been designed to show not that France was responsible for the war, but that Vichy’s structures of government wereright,becausethepreviousstructuresofgovernment–inparticular,thein- trusion of politics (that is, debate) into the apolitical realms of administration, justice,defense, and economic policy – had led to the defeat. ThiscritiqueofthelateThirdRepublicwasnotnew.Awidevarietyofpolit- icalfigures,fromÉdouardDaladieronthelefttoAndréTardieuontheright,had spent the interwar years trying to recast France along more technocratic lines. Onegroupofsuchlike-mindedindividuals,theRedressementFrançais,wouldin- deed provide the primary inspiration for the trials. Implicit in their analysis, as intheworkofmanylaterphilosophersofdemocracysuchasClaudeLefort,⁵was the idea that public policy consisted of two separate spheres: the “political” sphere,where public debate was necessary, and the “apolitical” sphere,where aneliteconsensushadalreadybeenreachedandfurtherdebatewouldonlyun- dermine good government. Pushing sensitive political topics such as economic policyintotheapoliticalsphereofpureadministrationheldinherentantidemo- craticelements,buttheinterwarRedressementFrançaisdidnotseeitsactivities inthatlight.Rather,theirirritationattheignorantmassesimpingingonspheres of which they knew nothing bore a considerable resemblance to today’s Dubai Consensus on economic policy. Philosophically, it was closer to the American pragmatisttraditionofC.S.PeirceandWilliamJames,withtheirrespectforsci- enceandlimitationofthesphereoflegitimatedoubt,thantotheanti-democrat- ic theorists of Nazi Germany.The members of the Redressement Français were merely reiterating the basic insight common to all theorists of democracy that  See, for example, Lefort’s discussion of the relationship between democracy and rights in ClaudeLefort,ThePoliticalFormsofModernSociety:Bureaucracy,Democracy,Totalitarianism, ed. John B. Thompson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986), 239–272. Lefort was much better awareoftheproblematicnatureofseparatingrightsfromdebate;theobjectiveofhisanalysis wastocreatethepossibilityofaleft-wingpoliticsbasedonarespectfor,ratherthanaMarxist rejectionof,theideaofhumanrights.