The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation [Hardcover]

Culture matters. It mattered centrally to the Germans as they sought to establish a New Europe under German-Nazi hegemony. It mattered to the Vichy government as it sought to rid France of any vestiges of the Third Republic, to create a nationalistic, conservative society, and to ingratiate itself with the occupier with a policy of deliberate collaboration. It mattered because Paris was the center of Western Culture until 1940. Culture matters because it is what brings all the strands of society together and, in one way or another, reveals society to itself.

The overwhelming majority of works dealing with the German occupation of France and the Vichy regime, deal with the political and military aspects of that difficult period, though some do focus on how ordinary citizens behaved during those years. What has been missing has been a thorough analysis of the "culture" community as it related to the Germans. This void is what Mr. Spotts' "Shameful Peace" seeks to fill and mostly succeeds. This is not an exhaustive listing of who did what to whom during those years; not everybody who was anybody then is worth the memory. Spotts takes each of the elements of what we usually regard as "culture": literature, painting, sculpture, music, popular entertainement, publishing, theatre, film and, selecting representative figures, analyses their behavior, i.e., answers the question did they collaborate or not, what form did collaboration, resistance, abstention, or flight take, what were the ramifications of their actions, how they fit within the German and Vichy schemes, and what was their respective aftermath with the Liberation. This is well structured analysis and narrative, a pleasure to read that becomes something of a page turner. The moral terrain is challenging as it dwells on choices people made, people with whose work one is familiar and of unquestionable merit to this day. The surprises come in the details as, in general, one is already aware, in many of the cases, about who collaborated and who did not. When discussing painters (Picasso, Matisse, etc.), it is interesting to also see dealers discussed, and how several (even "protected" Jewish ones) were more than willing to procure for Goering, Goebbels and Hitler the "old masters" they so craved. The Paris art market flourished during the occupation.

In the summing up of the period, when discussing trials during the "depuration", after the liberation, Spotts frames the underlying questions clearly: "In a country where ideas have always been more important than facts, the question was whether the accused should be judged for their opinions as well as their deeds. That led to further question whether opinions could become deeds when they called for action - such as arrest, assassination, or deportation. And behind this lay the still broader issue of the responsibility of artists and intellectuals to society." Indeed, these are the questions that underly the text. Indeed such were the times that accepting a dinner invitation from the occupier could be construed as a demoralizing factor to the resister. Had not the Spanish established a strong, universal operating principle during the Napoleonic invasion that the primary and most legitimate responsibility during an "occupation" is to resist it?

I recommend in tandem a more specific analysis of the film industry during the occupation, Evelyn Ehrlich's Cinema of Paradox: French Filmaking under the German Occupation and Alice Kaplan's work about Brasillach, The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach.

The book contains interesting illustrations. It is not footnoted. However, sources for each chapter are detailed in a separate section at the end.

This is a well-researched, well-written account of French intellectuals' behavior during the Occupation and its immediate aftermath. I was familiar with the topic before I read the book, and I can wholeheartedly say the author is accurate in what he depicts. I don't understand the poor ratings the book has received on this website - maybe they're due to the fact that collaboration remains a touchy topic in some circles.

There wasn't any big revelation for me in the book - yes, Drieu la Rochelle and Brasillach were "collabos", Beauvoir stayed in Paris but tried to keep her hands clean, Guehenno was a Resistant, etc. What I think is the strength of the book is that it gathers vignettes of all the major French intellectuals' behavior in one place. In addition, it introduces shades of gray in their behavior and makes the reader about what constitutes collaboration. Some cases were obviously clear-cut, but others not as much. It raises interesting moral issues.

The book also arouses outrage regarding collabos' attitude and the wide differences in treatment they received after the war. This is no small achievement from the author, given that the facts described occurred almost 70 years ago. He makes us feel the injustice of it all anew (especially when collabos got off almost scot-free).

Certainly, the "epuration" was severe immediately after the Liberation, but sentences were often drastically reduced after a few years when some French decided they preferred to move on - often but not always, as is clear with the case of Germaine Lubin, whose behavior was not nearly as reprehensible as others who got punished much more lightly. Also, some newspapers were shut down, but "collabo" publishers like Gallimard were allowed to continue their business unimpeded.

Again, many of the facts described in the book are well-known, and there's a bibliography for each chapter at the end of the book. I don't understand the negative reviews. The book is thorough and well-documented. There are a couple of annoying typos but not many. The biggest flaw of the book is to sometimes quote expressions in French without providing translations, but it only happened a handful of times.

The first few chapters of the book are quite general, describing Germans' efforts to control French culture after they occupied Paris. Later, each chapter of the book covers a different category of intellectuals; for instance, "Artful Dodgers" is about painters and "Enigma Variations" about musicians.

This book has many of the characteristics of "Artists in Exile" by Joseph Horowitz, with its vignettes on a broad spectrum of people. It should become a reference for anyone interested in this period in French history.

As a Frenchman interested in the gray attitude of the French during WWII, I was eagerly anticipating the publication of this book and was somewhat disppointed when I read it. It is basically a gallery of portraits of important intellectual figures of the time, from Sartre to Galtier-Boissière, from Gide to Guéhenno, from Drieu to Céline, from Picasso to Matisse,etc. However, those portraits I found rather superficial (very light on Rebatet or Brasillach, more consistant on Drieu or Céline), the author sometimes reaching outright conclusions, condemning the opinions of some of the characters involved, when a more nuanced judgement would have been more appropriate (especially on Ernst Jünger or Colette, the latter erroneously appearing in a list of collaborationist writers on page 238). Also, the author often taps well-known sources (such as the war-time diaries by Gide, Guéhenno, Fabre-Luce or Jünger)and therefore brings forth very few revelations to an attentive student of the period. Nothing new is written about Céline, Drieu or Brasillach, as well as on Gide or Sartre, which is rather frustrating. I also expected a more in-depth account of the nefarious deeds of the notoriously influential collaborationist newspaper "Je Suis Partout" or the literary publication "Comoedia", both of which the book scantily broaches.

This book may be satisfactory to the layman as an introduction, but left me very frustrated and wanting to know more than I already knew. A book on the same topic is available in France,"Le Voyage d'Automne", which describes the attitude of such writers as Jouhandeau or Giraudoux (nearly absent here), Drieu, Brasillach, in much more precise details. If there is an English translation, I strongly recommend it, as well as the catalogue for the current exhibition held at the NY Public Library until July 25, 2009, curated by Robert A. Paxton, which tackles precisely the same subject.

Note: My version also needs some editing. Heydrich's first name, for example, was not "Reinhold" (page 50)...