Chapter 1

(Root Causes)

One of the most boring details of any non-fiction book has always been the presentation of statistics to prove the author’s point or conclusion. Unfortunately, the impulse of some historians has been to present the “facts” in such a way as to embellish their personal point of view. As an experiment, in my book called “The 400 Year War”, I used a matrix of weighted data points to present the content designed to show the unbiased elements of the four hundred year conflict between the Native Indian population of the lower 48 States and the European settlers that fought for control of the territory known as the United States of America. In each chapter, I incorporated a section of fictional content to illustrate the human impact on both sides. I have followed that same formula for this story of betrayal and fight for survival on the European battlefields of World War Two.

The period in this book is much shorter.

The emphasis is on the Period of 1940 to 1945.

In the beginning, it is necessary to look at some of the core reasons for the behavior of the French authorities in their unholy pact with the Nazi war planners. It is important to have some insight into the thinking of the average French citizen in those brutal years as well as to understand the fears of the Jewish populace inside the “Bouches-du-Rhone” with emphasis on the city of Marseille with its concentration of Jewish residents wanting only to escape and survive the horrors of Nazi concentration camps.

I have determined that this story should be divided into several different time periods. We have the pre-fall of France period which I state to be “prior to 1940”, the initial stage that spans the period from 1940 – 1942, the central period concluded to be from 1943 – 1944, and the chaotic period of 1945 when both occupied France and Vichy France realized that it was entirely possible the Nazis might lose the war.

The book will be divided into these four parts and the chapters will be sequentially numbered in the entirety.

When considering the root causes for the Vichy attitude to the Jewish population, it is necessary to go back to the Treaty of Versailles and the economic circumstance that led into the terrible period of inflation and despair with the global depression of the 1930s. Many of the European nations that participated in the conflict known as “The Great War” or World War I suffered huge losses in terms of human life and treasure. Many the battles of World War I took place on French soil and French civilians suffered as much, if not more, as the military units involved.

That bloody conflict caused the general French populace to vow that it would be the war to end all wars and that they would never be subjected to such loss of life again. This psychological war fatigue made the French military and most French civilians opposed to World War II and it should have been no surprise to Allies that they surrendered so quickly and submitted to Nazi rule by establishing the Vichy government with Marshall Petain as a figurehead to conduct Hitler’s orders.

The political atmosphere in France in the 1930s saw the rise of followers of Communism with the borders of France and a falling away mood of religious, mostly Christian, principles. Large numbers of foreign refugees entered French territory, including Jews, believing France would protect them from Nazi domination. Jews in occupied France, after the invasion, fled south to the unoccupied areas in the hope that the French authorities would defend their human rights. Unfortunately, it was a false hope as history unfolded with the Nazi “Final Solution” enforced with horrific results.

As World War II opened in France with the German “Blitzkrieg” that shocked the entire world and made a shambles of the Maginot Line, the French civilians accepted the defeat with ease because they wanted desperately not to be at war with any other nation. Butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers all shrugged their shoulders in typical French dismissal of anything deemed to be of little importance and told their wives and children at the dinner table, “Cie la vie” or “That’s Life.”

The soldiers put down their weapons and walked home shedding their uniforms for civilian clothing at the first opportunity. The Germans were quite content to let them go because they did not want to be slowed down by tending the hundreds of thousands of surrendered troops when they had a timetable for complete conquest of the entirety of Europe.

The mood of the country in 1940 was subdued for the average French citizen in the non-Jewish population. They had little interest in the plight of the Jewish neighbors around them. The core Jewish community had stubbornly resisted assimilation into the French culture and that separation helped ensure their fate. In the case of intermarriage, the French authorities considered a Jew a Jew unless they converted publicly to another religion and raised their children in the French culture. In the later stages of the war, even those steps were unable to prevent deportation of the Jewish member of the marriage and in some cases the mixed children were also deported under the guise of not wanting to separate the children from their parent.

I selected Marseille as my city of this project because I visited the city in the 1950s and in the 1970s and decided it was a good example of the Vichy behavior to the Jewish population during WWII because it was more compliant in conducting the orders of the Nazi regime than other notable Jewish centers such as Lyon or Toulouse. The demographic of Jewish residents was much more interesting in composition than the Jewish residents of Paris where almost 65% of the Jews were engaged in the garment industry and unassimilated into the French culture by choice and not by restrictive design.

I interviewed dozens of alleged “witnesses” to the deportations and found them to be openly proud of their actions in the 1950s and noticeably reluctant to discuss the matter in the 1970s. I say “interviewed” but must admit it was more of a covert interrogation fueled by spirits and mostly in broken English because my French was admittedly non-existent. I lived in Germany in the 1950s and would often discuss the subject of Jewish genocide with ex-soldiers and ordinary civilians. For example, in the areas around Bergan-Belsen, the older Germans were more apt to decline discussion, and professed ignorance of the details of the Holocaust. Later in the 1970s, it was as if the entire affair was a myth or a lie that was devised to slander the half of Germany that was now a Democratic State.