So you read the title of this blog and automatically assumed I was going to share my opinion with you concerning recent events around our country. You were interested to know what I thought about the desire and the movements to destroy or relocate certain statues, paintings, or other memorials that certain people might find offensive.

No, I wanted to talk with you today about the deliberate destruction of approximately 1,750 bronze statues throughout France during the German Occupation of World War II. Not since the French Revolution had so many statues been destroyed (albeit for different reasons).

The Victor Hugo monument in Paris. Photo by anonymous (1908). Georges Lafenestre, L’œuvre de Ernest Barrias, Paris, Renouard, 1908. PD-70+. Wikimedia Commons.

During the latter part of the 19th-century, the French government known as The Third Republic began a wide-spread campaign to erect bronze statues. These men (Joan of Arc being the lone woman) were considered heroes of France but in the minds of the citizens, they were closely associated with a widely considered corrupt government. This period of time was sarcastically dubbed “Statuemania.” Learn more.

What Happened?

Well, first of all, the Nazis invaded France on 14 June 1940 and began a four-year occupation. Hitler created two zones in France: The Occupied and Unoccupied (Paris was in the Occupied Zone). After seventy years in existence, The Third Republic was replaced by the Vichy government headed by Marshal Pétain and Pierre Laval.

Pétain’s collaborationist government was located in the small spa town of Vichy—the Unoccupied Zone. By November 1942 with the Allied successes in North Africa, all pretenses of a separate government were gone when the Germans eliminated the Unoccupied Zone and began to increase their direct role in running occupied France including higher demands for agricultural products and other resources (including non-ferrous metals) to feed the Nazi military machine. Learn more about the Vichy government here.

After France was liberated in August 1944, it became clear that Pétain and Laval had sanctioned laws, decrees, and actions that far exceeded Nazi expectations (including quotas for the deportation of Jews). During their separate trials, Pétain and Laval tried to argue in their defense that they were only trying to keep the Nazis happy and so avoid greater hardships for the French—at least as long as you weren’t a Jew, Freemason, communist, gypsy, homosexual, political opponent or any other type of untermensch (inferior person). Read More Statuemania

German General Anton Dostler is tied to a stake before his execution by firing squad. Photo by Blomgren (1 December 1945). National Archives. PD-US Government. Wikimedia Commons.

The German Occupation of Paris and France turned brutal within eighteen months of their soldiers marching down the avenue des Champs-Élysées on the morning of 14 June 1940. Despite the original orders to respect and act as “gentlemen” to the citizens of Paris, the Germans gradually increased the pressure of their jackboot on the throat of France. After the successful Allied invasion of North Africa (Operation Torch) in November 1942, all pretense of an “independent” French government—Vichy—was gone as was the designation of the Occupied- and Unoccupied-Zones.

La Grande Rafle (The Great Roundup) had taken place over two days in July 1942. More than 13,000 Jewish citizens (approximately 4,000 were children) were arrested, detained, and transported to Auschwitz—only several hundred would return less than three years later. Food was scarce except for the privileged few who could afford the black market or those who kept company with German officers. Detention, interrogation, torture, and execution of hostages, résistants, foreign agents, or anyone else the Nazis deemed unworthy became common place as the Gestapo strengthened its position within the Nazi hierarchy and its grip on Paris.

As the Allies moved closer to Paris in the late summer of 1944 after breaking out of Normandy, the Germans began to make arrangements to leave the city. They knew the consequences if they remained. Even some of the German officers tried to convince their lovers to accompany them back to Germany as they predicted harm would likely come to the women if they remained behind. Little did they know the scope of violence that would descend on suspected collaborators. Read More The Épuration: World War II French Revenge