Vichy's antisemitism: A dispute between historians heads to court
Faced with what they called the "silence" of the "official historians" in the face of this "manipulation of history," three historians, including two amateurs, decided to use this speech as the starting point for a book published the following year. Written by Jean-Marc Berlière, a respected historian of the French police, along with René Fiévet, an economist, and Emmanuel de Chambost, an engineer, Histoire d'une falsification: Vichy et la Shoah dans l'histoire officielle et le discours commémoratif ("History of a Falsification: Vichy and the Holocaust in Official History and Commemorative Discourse") took aim at "these 'court historians' and presidents of the Republic, all busy making the French feel guilty," and aimed to "restore the complexity to a question that cannot be reduced to a purely Vichyite initiative."
In July 2023, historian Laurent Joly, a specialist in the Vichy regime who also found the memorial discourse riddled with approximations and anachronisms, published a lengthy, detailed critique of the book in the Revue d'histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, tracing its "intellectual genealogy." "(...) Such a book does not come out of nowhere. It is part of a history of the historiography of Vichy and the crimes of collaboration, which for decades have inspired a whole literature seeking to minimize their gravity, up to the recent provocations of [far-right politician] Eric Zemmour."
The Comité de vigilance face aux usages publics de l'histoire (CVUH), a non-profit organization fighting against the misuse of history in the public sphere, also published a note signed by feminist historian Michèle Riot-Sarcey, which referenced Joly's article.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
LeMonde
an hour ago
- LeMonde
French petition against pesticide reaches two million signatories
A student-led petition against a chemical deadly to bees reached more than two million signatures in France on Monday, July 28, increasing pressure on the president not to sign a bill allowing its use into law. The legislation was adopted on July 8, but without a proper debate to bypass gridlock in a bitterly divided parliament. On July 10, a 23-year-old master's student launched a petition urging the French government to drop the law allowing the reintroduction of acetamiprid, a pesticide that is harmful to ecosystems but popular with many farmers in Europe. Banned in France since 2018, the chemical remains legal in the European Union. The insecticide is particularly sought after by beet and hazelnut growers, who say they have no alternative against pests and face unfair competition. The petition on France's lower-house Assemblée Nationale's website had garnered more than 2,015,000 signatures on Monday morning. Backers at the height of summer include 400 people from the culinary world, including Michelin-starred chefs, who have criticized the "blindness of our politicians." According to a poll published in La Tribune Dimanche on Sunday, 64% of people surveyed hope Macron will not sign the bill into law but will instead submit it to a new debate in parliament. Macron has said he is waiting to hear the verdict of the Constitutional Council, which is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the law on August 7. The contested legislation is dubbed the Duplomb law, after its author, Laurent Duplomb, a senator for the right-wing Republicans party. The petition reached 500,000 signatures last weekend, a threshold after which the lower house may choose to hold a public debate, but that would be limited to the content of the petition – not the law itself.
LeMonde
5 hours ago
- LeMonde
Tariffs: EU hands Trump a political win to avoid trade chaos
Suddenly, Donald Trump leaned toward Ursula von der Leyen and extended his hand, praising, with his signature superlatives, "the biggest deal ever made." Up to that point, the European Commission president had remained still in her large green velvet chair, but she accepted the handshake. That gesture closed, on Sunday, July 27, dozens of hours of sometimes bewildering negotiations between the European and American delegations, culminating in the meeting held in the ballroom of the sprawling Turnberry golf resort, owned by Trump, on Scotland's west coast. The suspense lasted until the very last minute. At the start of the meeting, the Republican, claiming to be "not in a good mood," still estimated the odds of reaching a deal at 50%. The agreement was clinched just five days before the August 1 deadline he had previously set, after which European exports would have faced punitive tariffs of 30%. Faced with two evils, the 27 EU member states chose what they saw as the lesser: an unbalanced compromise favoring the US rather than risking a full-scale trade war with unpredictable consequences. The choice was of "stability over total unpredictability," European Commissioner for Trade Maros Sefcovic explained on a flight from Brussels to Glasgow. While German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni welcomed the agreement without much enthusiasm, it was Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever who best summed up the mood among European leaders: "This is a moment of relief, but not of celebration." French Minister for European Affairs Benjamin Haddad, meanwhile, recognized the deal would bring "temporary stability" but called it "unbalanced."
Euronews
6 hours ago
- Euronews
On defence, France and Germany are inching closer but remain far apart
Germany is becoming more French - and vice versa - when it comes to defence but big differences in the state of their public finances and strategic thinking mean the so-called Franco-German engine is unlikely to be able to power a big shift in the way the EU as a whole does defence. "From a longer historical point of view, the degree of convergence (between the two countries) is arguably higher than it has been for, I would say, decades," Jacob F. Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank, told Euronews. Both capitals see Russia as their biggest long-term threat, and both have pledged to pour hundreds of billions of euros into their military and defence industrial base. In Berlin, this has been dubbed a "Zeitenwende" (or historical turning point) while Paris said its latest military programmation law is "the ultimate strategic move". This convergence was driven by Russia's ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which brought back conventional war to European soil, Donald Trump's return to the White House, which has put in doubt continued long-term US commitment to Europe's security, and a change of leadership in Germany. The new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, "basically took what I can only describe as a Gaullist stance", Kirkegaard said, by saying that "Europe needs to prepare for a future without a US security guarantee". 'France is converging with Germany' Yet one example of how this rapprochement in defence remains a laborious process came last week when France's Emmanuel Macron and Merz sought to diffuse tensions over a joint €100 billion project to develop a sixth-generation fighter jet. At the core of the dispute is the demand by France to secure 80% of the workshare for the new Future Combat Air System (FCAS), negating previous agreements that it would be split equally between the two countries and Spain, which is also part of the project. The French demand, however, "should not be as surprising as it seems", Rafael Loss, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), told Euronews, given that one of the major differences between France and Germany is how differently they view their military and the purpose they serve. The armed forces in France are part of the national foreign policy - as recent deployments in the Sahel attest - with the country's overseas territories and its possession of the nuclear weapon adding to its global perspective. "That's why the French military is much more comfortable with acting unilaterally or outside of EU, NATO contexts (than Germany's), and this then extends to the kinds of capabilities that the French armed forces prefer acquiring," Loss said. "Everything that relates to the French nuclear deterrent has to work when France is alone. And that means that FCAS, which is supposed to replace the Rafale fighter bombers going forward in carrying French nuclear weapons, French military and political leadership will not accept a situation where they're dependent to produce this capability because the nuclear deterrent depends on that capability." "French industry will need to be able to produce this aircraft by themselves if push comes to shove. They're willing to cooperate when strategic orientations align, but ultimately they have to produce everything independently of others. And again, that's something that many in Germany and across Europe haven't quite realised," he added. Still, Loss continued, "France is converging with Germany" with the "realisation that for the sake of European security, it needs to show that it invests in its partnerships and relationships with Europeans, especially those on the eastern flank". 'A big wasted opportunity' But the other major hurdle for the two to advance a common defence agenda at the EU level is the stark difference in their respective fiscal space. Germany's debt-to-Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio stood at 62.3% in the first quarter of the year. France's was at 114.1%, well above what the bloc's rules mandate (60%). This structural divergence means that as European countries aim to significantly ramp up their defence spending and military capabilities to deter a possible Russian attack towards the turn of the decade, Germany can afford to invest heavily in defence, while France cannot. For instance, Germany has asked to make use of a proposal by Brussels to loosen fiscal rules for defence spending, something France, which is targeted by an excessive deficit procedure, cannot do. France, which has consistently invested in defence over the last few decades, has less ground to cover, so to speak, but the sums advanced by the German government (including a €500 billion fund to boost the military and the country's infrastructure) should mean it catches up quickly. But their public finances also "fundamentally place them on different sides of negotiating tables" at the EU level, Kirkegaard said. The European Commission has put forward a plan to rearm Europe that it hopes will prompt member states to invest up to €800 billion before 2030. But most of that money is expected to come from member states' coffers, which in the case of France, are quite depleted. Given the scale of the task ahead, the Commission has been asked to come up with "innovative" financing options for defence. Macron has called for one of those options to be joint EU borrowing, something Germany has flat-out rejected. For Kirkegaard, this means that the crisis ushered in by Russia's war on Ukraine, is "a big wasted opportunity" for the bloc. "This crisis, the war in Ukraine, will not lead to materially more EU institutional or fiscal integration. It will lead to an expansion of the EU with Ukraine and maybe other countries but that's a different type of change to the EU and that's also very different than the last many big crises we've had," he said.
