Vichy France in WWII: Pro-Fascist, Pro-Catholic, Pro-Life, and Anti-Semitic
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- Опубликовано: 10 сен 2024
- The leaders of the pro-Catholic Vichy French regime that collaborated with the conquering Nazi regime were also deeply anti-Semitic, and cooperated with the Germans to persecute the Jews from the earliest days of the regime. Communism was the mortal enemy of the Christian faith, most Catholics saw fascists as allies in their struggles against communism.
Was the reputation of the Catholic Church harmed by the collaboration of the Vichy regime? There is no single clear-cut answer to this question. The study of the Vichy regime is most valuable when used as a study on how Christians should live their lives under a secular and ungodly regime. Most of the bishops were compromised in their dealings with the Nazis and the Vichy regime, only one Vichy bishop spoke out against collaboration, many bishops were forced to resign at the war’s end.
However, many Catholic clergy and laymen opposed the anti-Semitism of the war years. Communists and Catholics jointly fought against the Nazis in the French Resistance, and much pro-Catholic legislation introduced by the Vichy regime was retained after the war. We can be cautiously optimistic in our views, many Catholics and priests lived out their faith in difficult times, although many Catholics and priests collaborated with the Nazis.
We will learn about:
• How the Dreyfus Affair caused anti-Semitism to fester in France.
• How World War I set the stage for World War II in France.
• How French workers and POW’s worked as virtual slaves in Nazi factories.
• How Collaboration with the Nazis decreased as the Nazis started to lose the war, and how the Resistance movement increased in strength.
• How Christianity fared under Fascist Vichy France and after the war.
• How the Vichy regime adopted many pro-Catholic laws and policies while it sent its Jewish citizens to the Nazi death camps.
• How many French joined the Milice, the French secret police, who were more brutal than the Gestapo.
• How many French joined the LPV, the French Volunteer Legion, who fought against the Bolshevik soviets on the Eastern Front with the Nazis.
• How Operation Torch, the Allied Invasion of French North Africa, and the D-Day invasion of the French Normandy Beaches affect the Resistance and Vichy France.
• How Robert Paxton’s book on Vichy France profoundly changed how Frenchmen viewed the history of Vichy France.
We will learn about many of the personalities of Vichy France:
• Marshall Phillippe Petain, hero of WWI, collaborationist Chief of Vichy France
• General Charles de Gaulle, leader of Free France
• Winston Churchill, English Prime Minister who urged the French to fight the Nazis
• Francois Darlan and Pierre Laval, Vichy leaders
• Yves Congar, the French priest, and how his ecumenical experience in a French POW camp affected the religious freedom decrees of the Second Vatican Council several decades later.
Purchase from Amazon:
Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944, Revised Edition, by Robert O. Paxton: amzn.to/3m5cRCT
Politics, Society and Christianity in Vichy France, by W. D. Halls: amzn.to/3xSWX0u
View the slides at: www.slideshare...
See our blogs:
Vichy France Regime, Blog 1, Pro-Life, Pro-Catholic, and Fascist
www.seekingvirt...
Vichy France, Blog 2, Collaborating with the Germans in the Early Years, 1940-1942
www.seekingvirt...
Vichy France, Blog 3, The Tide Turns, Resistance and Collaboration
www.seekingvirt...
Vichy France, Blog 4, Christianity in Vichy France
www.seekingvirt...
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This is original content based on research by Bruce Strom and his blogs. Images in the Public Domain, many from Wikipedia, some from the National Archives, are selected to provide illustration. When images of the actual topic or event are not available in the Public Domain, images of similar objects and events are used for illustration.
All events are portrayed in historical context and for educational purposes. No images or content are primarily intended to shock and disgust. The ancient world was a warrior culture out of necessity, to learn from the distant past we should not only judge them from our modern perspective but also from their own ancient perspective on their own terms.
Thank you for your comprehensive and concise summarisation of that period in history. I was not able to find it anywhere else.
Thanks!
Was pro-Catholicism an element in Vietnam's post war fight for independence?
Diem was a Catholic who discriminated against the Buddhist majority, so yes. This is history that I have not studied in depth.
thank you for responding...
I remember the Monks setting themselves on fire..
In the states very little studies about Vietnam in school.
Commenting on an old response, there are many interesting RUclips videos on personal experiences of Vietnam veterans, like this video: ruclips.net/video/tixOyiR8B-8/видео.html
This video is excellent; I was looking for some teaching on Vichy France after watching Casablanca with Bogart and this really filled the bill. This man is a tremendous teacher and has a bunch of pictures that complement the teachings. It obviously took a lot of work for this presentation! Thanks for your super video!!
Thanks! You should find the videos of Christians living in Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, the Spanish Civil War, and apartheid South Africa soon after the war interesting as well.
I think this is a quality presentation of the subject. Thank you!
You're very welcome! Thanks, next week we have videos scheduled for the Wartime Pope Pius XII, the book we reviewed was written using the newly opened Vatican archives.
You are welcome to click on the "M" icon and you can join our online Saturday morning discussions, we will be scheduling more discussions in the next day or so.
Petain! Great man!
Petain was a great man only if fascists were great men.
Very informative, great work.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you for your well researched video.
Glad it was helpful! We also have a meetup online discussion group where I try out my RUclips scripts before I record them:
www.meetup.com/Reflections-on-Theology-and-Moral-Philosophy/
There is a lot of useful information here, so I cannot criticize this lecture with a broad brush. And a Catholic perspective is badly needed. However, I've read that the policy of deporting Jewish refugees who lacked actual French citizenship was commenced by the Third Republic in its last months. Vichy continued where Daladier and Bonnet left off, but with explicit emphasis on treating French Jews, as opposed to refugees and foreign nationals, as second class citizens. Also, I thought that recent scholarship had shown that not all French police were enthusiastic about deporting Jews, and that the number of French Jews (presumably citizens under Vichy) surviving the war was about 75 percent. Additionally, there was a species of non-Catholic antisemitism in France that was more extreme than the more traditional variant, and such devotees did not care much for Petain and preferred the German zone of occupation (Celine a possible example). Finally, not all concentration camps were death camps such as Treblinka, Sobibor, etc. (Dachau and Ravensbruck were not.) It is not clear, therefore, that the fate of deported priests and pastors would be similar to that of Jews. Finally, if Petain did try to reach out to Pope Pius XII to confirm the acceptable limits of anti-Semitic policy, it would be highly important to flesh this out and not bury it.
Much of what you say is true. I do not say all, because my interests are eclectic, and though all of what you say is reasonable and internally consistent, I am not sure of all the details. My videos are book reviews, you can read the sources for more details.
But, as you state, the uncomfortable truth is Adolph Hitler did not invent fascism and anti-Semitism, it as been an ugly part of our history.
We have several other videos on Christians under the main fascist regimes before and during World War II.
@@ReflectionsMPH My interests are eclectic as well. And I am/was an historian, but never with "portfolio." I admit my points were somewhat disparate. Anyway, I am concerned about the conflation of current concerns about uncontrolled, illegal immigration with what most fascistic regimes intended to do about immigrants (particularly Jews) four generations ago. A conservative of the 2020s is not necessarily a "Petainist" of 1940. So-called modern liberals have had too great a hold on discussions of the Right in France and on the topics we have been reviewing. They have been way too dominant in the teaching of history. Today, even the world of the liberal/left of the 20th century is being shattered. Also, I believe that a revived Catholic Church would be a great bulwark against the blight of neo-paganism that is threatening the very roots of our civilization. Actually, I judged my most important point would be to verify what Petain may have communicated to Pius XII and what the latter may have responded to him. The Church must remain a bulwark of exacting scholarship. Have you recently posted the other videos you mention?
This is the playlist of Christians under Fascism: ruclips.net/p/PLJVlY2bjK8ljmWA9WwFz3IeRonyUNxRKO
It would be interesting to investigate the correspondence between Petain and Pope Pius XI and XII. More interesting would be a reflection on Papen's Memoirs and biographies.
Maybe I will comment on this:
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Theses and Dissertations, December 2022: Jacques Maritain and Popes Pius XI and XII on the Church-State Relationship, Patrice O'Rourke Linn
dc.uwm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4038&context=etd
great video... thanks
Thanks, this video and the other videos on Christians living under the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler also lead into the video on the Vatican II Decree on Religious Liberty.
britain did not stand alone
I am surprised these antiquated colour by numbers views about Vichy France are still being professed.
The sister blog has the footnotes for the sources of my videos. Paxton's famous book on Vichy France was a major source.
Useful plenty info's thanks for sharing this
Glad it was helpful!
Great video. I will quote the teaching of St. Pius X, "True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors. Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them." (Notre charge apostolique)
Thanks, the Vatican opened the archives for Pope Pius XII, and using that as an additional source, David Kertzer recently published his book, The Pope at War. So that will be a video in the next month or so.
I am Jewish, and French. My relatives were sent to Auschwitz and perished. I still cannot reconcile claiming my being French, and Jewish- knowing that Vichy consciousness still permeates the French culture. Pls help me understand.
This is what was behind the reforms of Vatican II, which condemned anti-Semitism, and denounced the notion that Jews were damned unless they converted to Christianity, we have several videos on this so far, and will soon do a video on the Vatican II decree on Jews and non-christians.
ruclips.net/video/i_zGeTW9QMI/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/vHtYu6UtiuE/видео.html
And some videos on anti-Semitism and Pope Pius XII, part of a series of videos
ruclips.net/video/ONnAcLLBNog/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/QQEd9LDzV1U/видео.html
Ok boomer
Intellect, like wine, improves with aging.
Excellent presentation. I love to study and learn about WW2. I recently watch Casablanca; so I was wondering about the Vichy France in North Africa? I’m Catholic, so I’m ashamed to see that most of the Catholics did not follow their faith but chose anti-Semitic thoughts and behavior. We are all created in the image of GoD
Thanks!
But remember that the French Republic(s) had been persecuting the Catholic Church, murdering priests and nuns, stealing Church property, chasing out monks, closing Catholic schools. These things are all much worse than sending a couple of Jews to a concentration camp. (Which the US also did to the Japanese.) The Vichy reversed the tide for the only time since the Revolution. Yes the Jewish policies were not ideal, but they were quickly corrected. Even still, compared to the harm done by the Law of Separation in 1905 it is nothing (c.f. Vehementer Nos). France has been destroyed by it. St. Pius X says, "for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion [i.e. Catholicism]." (Notre charge apostolique)
Petain and his collaborationist Vichy government helped hunt down and send 70,000 Jewish people to their death.
The French should be grateful to Britain, Canada and the US, for liberating their cowardly country. 🥸
Their faith IS anti -Semitism. it has been preached from Catholic pulpits for 2000 years and led to the Holocaust, It was preached before ,during and after The Holocaust.it is actually THE central tenant of the Catholic church and is written into the Christian (Catholic) New Testament, Surely , as a Catholic you know that?
Just found your channel....im diving in head first❤
Wonderful!