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Boston Globe
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Odile de Vasselot, teenage aristocrat in the French Resistance, dies at 103
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'One had to do something,' she said in an interview many years later. 'One never has the right to just sit there and do nothing.' Advertisement She recalled being incensed, as an 18-year-old, by the sight of the giant Nazi flags over the Rue de Rivoli in Paris. 'It was unthinkable,' she said, 'with those huge banners flying with the swastika on them.' At her death, President Emmanuel Macron of France saluted 'a great lady who honorably answered all the appeals, throughout her life, and did so with a courage that can only edify us.' Advertisement Macron recalled that, after the war, Ms. de Vasselot founded the Lycée Sainte Marie d'Abidjan, a girls' school in Ivory Coast, where girls' education was woefully underserved. Ms. de Vasselot's Resistance career resembled that of many others, with one key difference: In a largely working-class movement, she was an aristocrat who had to deceive her watchful mother to go on her first missions. She came from a family of military officers, though -- her father was a lieutenant colonel in the French cavalry, her grandfather was a general, and an ancestor had fought for the Americans as a naval officer during the Revolutionary War -- and they had known and admired de Gaulle before the war, particularly for his visionary conviction about the importance of mobilized combat. In an interview with the Charles de Gaulle Foundation on the occasion of her 100th birthday, Ms. de Vasselot recalled the evening of June 18, 1940, when she was ascending to her bedroom in the keep of the castle that had been in her family since the 15th century, in the west-central Poitou region. 'There was a little radio built by my brother,' she said. 'And all of a sudden I heard, 'Me, General de Gaulle, I'm calling on officers, junior officers, combatants.'' She continued: 'I was astonished to hear someone I actually knew speaking on the radio. I came down to the living room, and I said, 'You know what I just heard -- de Gaulle is in London. He's calling people to come to him, quickly.'' Her grandfather General Jean Gaspard Marie René de Cugnac then exclaimed: 'You hear that! The war isn't over!' 'Right away, we were all with General de Gaulle,' Ms. de Vasselot recalled. Advertisement She took part in the famous student demonstration of Nov. 11, 1940, the first public act of resistance against the Germans in Paris, but chafed at how powerless she felt. 'The Resistance was a fortress for me, and I couldn't find the door,' she said in an interview in 2021. Her chance came, she said, in June 1943, when a friend put her in touch with a member of a Resistance group known as the Zero network. (Other accounts offer a different chronology.) She was asked to deliver Resistance mail and newspapers to network members in Toulouse, taking the night train on Friday and returning the next day. 'I could have been struck by lightning, and I wouldn't have been more shocked,' she said in a video interview with Agence France-Presse. 'Because, at that time, young women were kept under close watch. Everything I did, I had to tell my mother about it.' But she accepted the mission, lying to her mother about her weekly absences. 'Women had a lot of advantages,' she recalled. 'They didn't arouse suspicion.' 'The Germans didn't think women could be underground.' By the end of the year, arrests had made it dangerous to work with the Zero network. Ms. de Vasselot joined another group, known as the Comet network, and for two months, until early 1944, she walked through mud and swamps along the Belgian frontier, meeting up with Allied airmen and parachutists, giving them money and forged papers and accompanying them to France, where they could make their way to neutral Spain. One morning in January, on the Lille-Paris train with two of her 'boys,' she said, her blood ran cold when she heard a German voice demanding, 'Identity papers!' The young men didn't understand, and they were immediately arrested. Advertisement 'What still astonishes me is that the Germans didn't realize the escort was a young woman,' she recalled. 'But since I was exactly to their taste -- blonde, blue-eyed, young -- they didn't ask me any questions.' She rejoined the Zero network that summer, as the allies were creeping their way toward Paris, and was sent on new missions throughout France. With the end of the war came numerous medals and recognition, and the renewed pursuit of studies that would lead to a career in education. Odile de Vasselot de Régné was born Jan. 6, 1922, in Saumur, the seat of the French cavalry school, in the Loire Valley, to Gaston de Vasselot de Régné and Chantal de Cugnac. She grew up largely in Metz, studying with the nuns of the Sacred Heart. Her father was stationed there before the war, as was de Gaulle, who headed the 507th Régiment de Chars, or Mobilized Unit. She recalled playing with de Gaulle's son, Philippe, as a child. She received her baccalaureate degree in 1939 and, after the war, a degree in history from the Sorbonne. In 1947, she joined the religious congregation of the Sisters of Saint Francis Xavier. In 1959, the congregation sent her to Abidjan, in Ivory Coast, to start a girls' school in cooperation with the progressive government of Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the country's first president. The school opened in 1962, and Ms. de Vasselot remained its director until 1988, when she returned to France. The Ivorian newspaper Fraternité Matin wrote recently that 'under the enlightened direction of Mme. de Vasselot, this establishment, far more than a school, became the key institution that forged the female elite of this country.' Advertisement No immediate family survives Ms. de Vasselot. Her funeral Mass took place at the Cathedral of Saint-Louis-des-Invalides in Paris, an honor reserved for France's war heroes. In November, as Macron was decorating her with the National Order of Merit at the Élysée Palace, she responded with bracing words: 'What I want to say to young people is, 'Never give up, never give up, whatever difficulties you face.' ' This article originally appeared in
Local Italy
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Local Italy
Are Europe's ties with United States set to worsen?
Europeans have been caught off guard under a tirade of insults, the threat of steep customs duties and notably disagreements on the war in Ukraine. But the wind was blowing in that direction even before Donald Trump's return to power. The world's leading superpower believes it has better things to do than to keep paying for a Europe in economic decline, seeing it as freeloading on defence and not doing much for it commercially in return. Since Trump's re-election, the tectonic shift has become an earthquake, particularly over Europe's exclusion from peace talks on Ukraine between Washington and Moscow. The Republican leader has said the EU was "formed in order to screw the United States" while his Vice President JD Vance has plunged the future US military presence in Europe into doubt. At the same time, Trump acolyte Elon Musk called German Chancellor Olaf Scholz "an incompetent fool". "There was already a trajectory of distancing that (Joe) Biden embodied politely and (Kamala) Harris would have embodied politely," said historian Frederic Fogacci, from the Charles de Gaulle Foundation in Paris. "Trump's approach is more brass, more abrasive," added Kelly Grieco, a US foreign and defence policy specialist at the Stimson Center think-tank in Washington. 'Frustration' in Washington "There's enormous frustration on this side of the Atlantic about (defence) because there's repeatedly been a warning that Europe needs to step up and prepare for this kind of moment," she said. "They haven't prepared anything." Europeans only began the debate about security without US support under pressure, and are still trying to keep Washington on-side. "It's no wonder that Americans look down on Europeans as dependents," said Stephen Wertheim, from the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Europeans present themselves as dependents. If Europe provides for its essential defence needs, that might just breed self-respect and inspire a new respect in Washington and the wider world," he added. On Ukraine, the European approach is "not necessarily helpful", said Grieco. "It seems to be still very focused on some kind of US security guarantee for Ukraine and pushing the administration for that," she said. "The more they're pushing the administration in that direction, the more it is creating more of a widening gap between the two sides." 'Freedom fries' Tensions between the two allies are not new. In 2018, during Trump's first term, the New York Times mused: "Is the Trans-Atlantic Relationship Dead?" "Let's not forget 'freedom fries'," said Grieco, recalling the time in 2003 when the US Congress renamed French fries because of France's refusal to back the war in Iraq. There was also friction during the Cold War, with the Suez Crisis a symbol of "geopolitical schooling" by Washington, said Fogacci. The United States and the Soviet Union demanded the withdrawal of French, British and Israeli troops from the Suez Canal, weakening the influence of London and Paris in the Middle East in the process. "During the Cold War, we operated in exactly this way. Moscow and Washington, in the end, settled the issue between themselves," said geopolitics scholar Frederic Encel. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, "the Americans were wary of a Europe that was integrating too widely towards the east", said Fogacci. "With the war in the former Yugoslavia, they took precedence over Europeans divided by old historical interests and without sufficient military capacity." Europe and US are 'natural allies' In his book "The Grand Chessboard", published in 1997, former US president Jimmy Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said: "Europe is America's natural ally. "It shares the same values; partakes, in the main, of the same religious heritage; practices the same democratic politics." Nearly 30 years later, the waters are more muddied. "Across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat," Vance said in February, citing as an example the refusal of Germany's mainstream parties to govern along with the far-right. Grieco said there was now a clear difference between the two sides on values and the way to express them. That contrasted the situation in the 1980s, said Fogacci, when "the neoconservatives had an idea of democracy quite compatible with the European one, their equation being that political liberalism leads to economic liberalism and vice versa". For Trump, "a country has weight through what it knows how to do, what it can offer or its capacity to cause harm," he added. "It's an 'ahistorical' vision, reducing democracy to decontextualised principles." Trump, he added, "does not look at states but land and resources". Convergence is still possible on the question of China, said Grieco. "In many ways, Europe still remains a natural ally of the United States in the sense that our interests are aligned on many issues. There's a potential alignment on China," she said.
Local Norway
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Local Norway
Are Europe's ties with United States set to worsen?
Europeans have been caught off guard under a tirade of insults, the threat of steep customs duties and notably disagreements on the war in Ukraine. But the wind was blowing in that direction even before Donald Trump's return to power. The world's leading superpower believes it has better things to do than to keep paying for a Europe in economic decline, seeing it as freeloading on defence and not doing much for it commercially in return. Since Trump's re-election, the tectonic shift has become an earthquake, particularly over Europe's exclusion from peace talks on Ukraine between Washington and Moscow. The Republican leader has said the EU was "formed in order to screw the United States" while his Vice President JD Vance has plunged the future US military presence in Europe into doubt. At the same time, Trump acolyte Elon Musk called German Chancellor Olaf Scholz "an incompetent fool". "There was already a trajectory of distancing that (Joe) Biden embodied politely and (Kamala) Harris would have embodied politely," said historian Frederic Fogacci, from the Charles de Gaulle Foundation in Paris. "Trump's approach is more brass, more abrasive," added Kelly Grieco, a US foreign and defence policy specialist at the Stimson Center think-tank in Washington. 'Frustration' in Washington "There's enormous frustration on this side of the Atlantic about (defence) because there's repeatedly been a warning that Europe needs to step up and prepare for this kind of moment," she said. "They haven't prepared anything." Europeans only began the debate about security without US support under pressure, and are still trying to keep Washington on-side. "It's no wonder that Americans look down on Europeans as dependents," said Stephen Wertheim, from the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Europeans present themselves as dependents. If Europe provides for its essential defence needs, that might just breed self-respect and inspire a new respect in Washington and the wider world," he added. On Ukraine, the European approach is "not necessarily helpful", said Grieco. "It seems to be still very focused on some kind of US security guarantee for Ukraine and pushing the administration for that," she said. "The more they're pushing the administration in that direction, the more it is creating more of a widening gap between the two sides." 'Freedom fries' Tensions between the two allies are not new. In 2018, during Trump's first term, the New York Times mused: "Is the Trans-Atlantic Relationship Dead?" "Let's not forget 'freedom fries'," said Grieco, recalling the time in 2003 when the US Congress renamed French fries because of France's refusal to back the war in Iraq. There was also friction during the Cold War, with the Suez Crisis a symbol of "geopolitical schooling" by Washington, said Fogacci. The United States and the Soviet Union demanded the withdrawal of French, British and Israeli troops from the Suez Canal, weakening the influence of London and Paris in the Middle East in the process. "During the Cold War, we operated in exactly this way. Moscow and Washington, in the end, settled the issue between themselves," said geopolitics scholar Frederic Encel. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, "the Americans were wary of a Europe that was integrating too widely towards the east", said Fogacci. "With the war in the former Yugoslavia, they took precedence over Europeans divided by old historical interests and without sufficient military capacity." Europe and US are 'natural allies' In his book "The Grand Chessboard", published in 1997, former US president Jimmy Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said: "Europe is America's natural ally. "It shares the same values; partakes, in the main, of the same religious heritage; practices the same democratic politics." Nearly 30 years later, the waters are more muddied. "Across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat," Vance said in February, citing as an example the refusal of Germany's mainstream parties to govern along with the far-right. Grieco said there was now a clear difference between the two sides on values and the way to express them. That contrasted the situation in the 1980s, said Fogacci, when "the neoconservatives had an idea of democracy quite compatible with the European one, their equation being that political liberalism leads to economic liberalism and vice versa". For Trump, "a country has weight through what it knows how to do, what it can offer or its capacity to cause harm," he added. "It's an 'ahistorical' vision, reducing democracy to decontextualised principles." Trump, he added, "does not look at states but land and resources". Convergence is still possible on the question of China, said Grieco.
Local Sweden
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Local Sweden
Are Europe's ties with United States set to worsen?
Europeans have been caught off guard under a tirade of insults, the threat of steep customs duties and notably disagreements on the war in Ukraine. But the wind was blowing in that direction even before Donald Trump's return to power. The world's leading superpower believes it has better things to do than to keep paying for a Europe in economic decline, seeing it as freeloading on defence and not doing much for it commercially in return. Since Trump's re-election, the tectonic shift has become an earthquake, particularly over Europe's exclusion from peace talks on Ukraine between Washington and Moscow. The Republican leader has said the EU was "formed in order to screw the United States" while his Vice President JD Vance has plunged the future US military presence in Europe into doubt. At the same time, Trump acolyte Elon Musk called German Chancellor Olaf Scholz "an incompetent fool". "There was already a trajectory of distancing that (Joe) Biden embodied politely and (Kamala) Harris would have embodied politely," said historian Frederic Fogacci, from the Charles de Gaulle Foundation in Paris. "Trump's approach is more brass, more abrasive," added Kelly Grieco, a US foreign and defence policy specialist at the Stimson Center think-tank in Washington. 'Frustration' in Washington "There's enormous frustration on this side of the Atlantic about (defence) because there's repeatedly been a warning that Europe needs to step up and prepare for this kind of moment," she said. "They haven't prepared anything." Europeans only began the debate about security without US support under pressure, and are still trying to keep Washington on-side. "It's no wonder that Americans look down on Europeans as dependents," said Stephen Wertheim, from the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Europeans present themselves as dependents. If Europe provides for its essential defence needs, that might just breed self-respect and inspire a new respect in Washington and the wider world," he added. On Ukraine, the European approach is "not necessarily helpful", said Grieco. "It seems to be still very focused on some kind of US security guarantee for Ukraine and pushing the administration for that," she said. "The more they're pushing the administration in that direction, the more it is creating more of a widening gap between the two sides." 'Freedom fries' Tensions between the two allies are not new. In 2018, during Trump's first term, the New York Times mused: "Is the Trans-Atlantic Relationship Dead?" "Let's not forget 'freedom fries'," said Grieco, recalling the time in 2003 when the US Congress renamed French fries because of France's refusal to back the war in Iraq. There was also friction during the Cold War, with the Suez Crisis a symbol of "geopolitical schooling" by Washington, said Fogacci. The United States and the Soviet Union demanded the withdrawal of French, British and Israeli troops from the Suez Canal, weakening the influence of London and Paris in the Middle East in the process. "During the Cold War, we operated in exactly this way. Moscow and Washington, in the end, settled the issue between themselves," said geopolitics scholar Frederic Encel. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, "the Americans were wary of a Europe that was integrating too widely towards the east", said Fogacci. "With the war in the former Yugoslavia, they took precedence over Europeans divided by old historical interests and without sufficient military capacity." Europe and US are 'natural allies' In his book "The Grand Chessboard", published in 1997, former US president Jimmy Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said: "Europe is America's natural ally. "It shares the same values; partakes, in the main, of the same religious heritage; practices the same democratic politics." Nearly 30 years later, the waters are more muddied. "Across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat," Vance said in February, citing as an example the refusal of Germany's mainstream parties to govern along with the far-right. Grieco said there was now a clear difference between the two sides on values and the way to express them. That contrasted the situation in the 1980s, said Fogacci, when "the neoconservatives had an idea of democracy quite compatible with the European one, their equation being that political liberalism leads to economic liberalism and vice versa". For Trump, "a country has weight through what it knows how to do, what it can offer or its capacity to cause harm," he added. "It's an 'ahistorical' vision, reducing democracy to decontextualised principles." Trump, he added, "does not look at states but land and resources". Convergence is still possible on the question of China, said Grieco.
Local Germany
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Local Germany
Are Europe's ties with United States set to worsen?
Europeans have been caught off guard under a tirade of insults, the threat of steep customs duties and notably disagreements on the war in Ukraine. But the wind was blowing in that direction even before Donald Trump's return to power. The world's leading superpower believes it has better things to do than to keep paying for a Europe in economic decline, seeing it as freeloading on defence and not doing much for it commercially in return. Since Trump's re-election, the tectonic shift has become an earthquake, particularly over Europe's exclusion from peace talks on Ukraine between Washington and Moscow. The Republican leader has said the EU was "formed in order to screw the United States" while his Vice President JD Vance has plunged the future US military presence in Europe into doubt. At the same time, Trump acolyte Elon Musk called German Chancellor Olaf Scholz "an incompetent fool". "There was already a trajectory of distancing that (Joe) Biden embodied politely and (Kamala) Harris would have embodied politely," said historian Frederic Fogacci, from the Charles de Gaulle Foundation in Paris. "Trump's approach is more brass, more abrasive," added Kelly Grieco, a US foreign and defence policy specialist at the Stimson Center think-tank in Washington. 'Frustration' in Washington "There's enormous frustration on this side of the Atlantic about (defence) because there's repeatedly been a warning that Europe needs to step up and prepare for this kind of moment," she said. "They haven't prepared anything." Europeans only began the debate about security without US support under pressure, and are still trying to keep Washington on-side. "It's no wonder that Americans look down on Europeans as dependents," said Stephen Wertheim, from the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Europeans present themselves as dependents. If Europe provides for its essential defence needs, that might just breed self-respect and inspire a new respect in Washington and the wider world," he added. On Ukraine, the European approach is "not necessarily helpful", said Grieco. "It seems to be still very focused on some kind of US security guarantee for Ukraine and pushing the administration for that," she said. "The more they're pushing the administration in that direction, the more it is creating more of a widening gap between the two sides." 'Freedom fries' Tensions between the two allies are not new. In 2018, during Trump's first term, the New York Times mused: "Is the Trans-Atlantic Relationship Dead?" "Let's not forget 'freedom fries'," said Grieco, recalling the time in 2003 when the US Congress renamed French fries because of France's refusal to back the war in Iraq. There was also friction during the Cold War, with the Suez Crisis a symbol of "geopolitical schooling" by Washington, said Fogacci. The United States and the Soviet Union demanded the withdrawal of French, British and Israeli troops from the Suez Canal, weakening the influence of London and Paris in the Middle East in the process. "During the Cold War, we operated in exactly this way. Moscow and Washington, in the end, settled the issue between themselves," said geopolitics scholar Frederic Encel. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, "the Americans were wary of a Europe that was integrating too widely towards the east", said Fogacci. "With the war in the former Yugoslavia, they took precedence over Europeans divided by old historical interests and without sufficient military capacity." Europe and US are 'natural allies' In his book "The Grand Chessboard", published in 1997, former US president Jimmy Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said: "Europe is America's natural ally. "It shares the same values; partakes, in the main, of the same religious heritage; practices the same democratic politics." Nearly 30 years later, the waters are more muddied. "Across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat," Vance said in February, citing as an example the refusal of Germany's mainstream parties to govern along with the far-right. Grieco said there was now a clear difference between the two sides on values and the way to express them. That contrasted the situation in the 1980s, said Fogacci, when "the neoconservatives had an idea of democracy quite compatible with the European one, their equation being that political liberalism leads to economic liberalism and vice versa". For Trump, "a country has weight through what it knows how to do, what it can offer or its capacity to cause harm," he added. "It's an 'ahistorical' vision, reducing democracy to decontextualised principles." Trump, he added, "does not look at states but land and resources". Convergence is still possible on the question of China, said Grieco. "In many ways, Europe still remains a natural ally of the United States in the sense that our interests are aligned on many issues. There's a potential alignment on China," she said.
