FACES AND PLACES: French delusions, French reality (05/18/03)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

French delusions, French reality

When you think of the French, what comes to mind? Wine? Food? Philosophy? Romance? Nôtre Dame? Or laziness, arrogance, duplicity, wimpiness. It's not easy to maintain an appreciation of the French character. Still, any nation that produced Renoir, Manet, Monet and Gauguin can't be all bad.

I've tried to like the French. I really have. Lesia and I have visited Quebec City and Paris. We had a French teacher live with us for a month. I had a class of French children study in my elementary school for three weeks. While none of this makes me an expert, what I experienced left an impression. Not a very good one, I'm afraid.

France, of course, played a significant role in America's War of Independence. A French fleet under the Comte de Grasse blockaded the Atlantic Seaboard, preventing the British from bringing in supplies or from retreating following defeat. The Marquis de Lafayette and the Comte de Rochambeau fought in Washington's army.

The French had their own revolution in 1789. Under the bloody Jacobins, however, their uprising became a precursor of the Bolshevik coup d'état of 1917 and led to the rise of Napoleon who, like the Bolsheviks, put much of Europe to the sword. Napoleon bit off more than he could chew, and when his delusions of a French empire in America was destroyed by a French defeat in Haiti, the United States benefitted. The result was the Louisiana Purchase.

French decline after 1789 was swift and painful. Five separate republics rose and fell. The Germans defeated France in 1815, 1870 and 1939. Germany lost to France in World War I, but only as a result of America's intervention. By demanding confiscatory surrender terms from the Germans, however, France helped lay the groundwork for Hitler's rise to power.

During Ukraine's war of independence, the French ignored Ukraine's liberation crusade and pushed for a re-united, democratic Russia. Soon after French troops landed in Odesa for example, French General Borius appointed Russian Gen. Alexei N. Grishin-Almazov as Odesa's military governor, undercutting Otaman Symon Petliura's forces, which had recently captured the city. French soldiers then accompanied the Russians as they drove Petliura's army out of Odesa.

Later, when the Poles invaded Eastern Galicia, they did so with the support of the French. Responding to French and American pressure, the Allies awarded Eastern Galicia to Poland in 1923.

During World War II, a decadent and demoralized France surrendered quickly to the Germans, betraying the British, their allies at the time. As Phillips Burrin points out in "France Under the Germans: Collaboration and Compromise": "The French were curling up as if in a shell. A refusal to accept defeat and a determination to fight on would have been made possible by common values, a willingness for sacrifice to preserve them and a sense of national fraternity. These though were conditional upon people harboring no illusions regarding the enemy, placing their hopes and faith in their ally, and maintaining solidarity with the other peoples of Europe who were threatened by Nazi hegemony. What was needed was a tragic imagination capable of envisaging the future rather than an obsession with pain, self-pity along with all the cheap hopes that such self-pity encouraged." Ennui was invented by the French.

Many Frenchmen welcomed the Vichy government as a means of national renewal. For intellectuals such as André Guide, Hitler was the man of the hour. "If German domination would secure us affluence," he wrote, "nine out of 10 Frenchmen would accept it, three or four of them most cheerfully ... to seek agreement with the enemy is not cowardice but wisdom ... What would be the point of battering ourselves against the bars of our cage?"

Existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre turned his back on the French resistance, continued to publish books and plays, and, like so many Frenchmen, did not join the resistance until it was clear that Germany would lose the war.

The French had no problem in rounding up Jews for Nazi extermination camps. The Vichy "lent a hand by turning in foreign Jews, denaturalizing some French Jews and arresting Jews with French nationality," writes Monsieur Burrin. Jewish property was the reward. "At least 10,000 Frenchmen worked during the occupation as temporary managers of despoiled Jewish businesses."

Germany dangled exploitation of conquered territories and France jumped at the bait. In 1943, explains Monsieur Burrin, Monsieur Laval was eager to participate in the Nazi rape of Ukraine. A French economic delegation was sent to Ukraine to determine how France could best exploit Ukraine's riches. Unfortunately for the French, Germany planned to retain Ukraine as a "private preserve."

"For at least three years," concludes Mr. Burrin, "the Germans managed both to maintain their domination and to keep the yoke in place, despite cutting to the minimum the number of troops assigned to maintaining order, and thereby making it possible to reinforce other fronts and to exploit the economic resources of France in a most effective way ... over 4 million French people were working for the Germans in 1944 (2,600,000 in France and 1,314,000 in Germany), that is to say 37 percent of the male population between the ages of 16 and 60. And that is not counting all the labor further up the pipeline of the French economy that was contributing indirectly to the German war effort ... Objectively, this massive assistant ... far outweighs the courageous actions of members of the resistance ..."

When the war ended, French General Charles DeGaulle demanded that France be an equal partner with Great Britain, the United States and the USSR in ruling a conquered Germany despite the fact that the French played a relatively paltry role in the Nazi defeat. Anglo-American benevolence also allowed France, along with the British, the United States and Russia, to gain an unearned permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.

The treachery of the French government during the Anglo-American war to liberate Iraq only serves to confirm what some believe may well have become a national trait.

America needs to come to France's assistance once again. The best thing we can do is to stop pretending that France is still a player on the international circuit. Why not ignore them until they grow up?

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: mbkuropas@compuserve.com.

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