Paxton demonstrates a command of all available materials as he dismantles what was the conventional wisdom, prior to the initial publication of this book in 1972, that Vichy shielded the French from the German occupiers. He carefully weighs the evidence before concluding that Vichy leaders, who were mostly traditionalists, were culpable on various counts, but perhaps mostly for their attempted use of leverage with the German occupiers to defeat their domestic opponents. Time and time again, Vichy leaders, especially Laval, proposed that the "New France" assume a role in the "New Europe" that Hitler was forging. And, time and time again, Hitler and von Ribbentrop dismissed these proposals out of hand.
Although Paxton lays out his portrait of Vichy in great detail, he leaves it to the reader to connect the dots. Numerous times, I closed the book and thought about a point that he had just raised. For instance, I have long posited the freedom-loving US, Britain, and the Resistance as the happy middle, surrounded by totalitarian communists in the form of the Soviet Union and totalitarian fascists in the form of Nazi Germany. But the Vichy traditionalists posited the US and the Soviet at the extremes along the freedom continuum, but yoked by urges to reduce men and women to units of production and to wield hegemonic power in the post-imperial era ushered in by the end of WW II. Hmm.
At the very end of the book, Paxton constructs a "moral balance sheet." The ultimate driver of the Vichy leaders was their fear of social disorder as the highest evil. Commoners among the occupied, as well as the occupiers, made peace with men of evil to maintain a degree of normalcy in their lives. In the final paragraph, Paxton addresses the reader directly, noting that readers, as well as the author, will not identify with these commoners, but will instead be tempted to identify with the Resistance, assuring themselves that they too would have resisted. But Paxton warns that we are far more likely to have acted like the Vichy majority. He then sets the hook in the final three sentences of the book:
"Indeed, it may be the German occupiers rather than the Vichy majority whom Americans, as residents of the most powerful state on earth, should scrutinize most unblinkingly. The deeds of occupier and occupied alike suggest that there come cruel times when to save a nation's deeper values one must disobey the state. France after 1940 was one of those times."
Written in the early 1970s, these words alluded to the US occupation of SE Asia. In the introduction to the 2001 edition, Paxton admits that some of his judgments about Vichy were colored by his "loathing" of the Vietnam War. The frightening thought is that, over 40 yrs later, this paragraph is as applicable today to our occupation of Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. Understanding the Vichy experience, we can begin to ask what Vichy dilemmas have we, the occupiers, imposed on these occupied peoples.
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Top reviews from other countries
Dr. R. Brandon
The Product of Prodigious Research, The Classic Work on Vichy France
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 26, 2017
George Shaw
Provided the reader has a vague understanding of French politics ...
Reviewed in Australia on June 16, 2015
Andrew Varsanyi
Right book, misleading quality description
Reviewed in Canada on September 4, 2020
