Aynesworth Michele McKay - Season of infamy: a diary of war and occupation, 1939-1945

SEASON
of INFAMY

Charles Rist, c. 1935. Courtesy of the Rist Family.

A Diary of War
and Occupation,
19391945

Charles Rist

Compilation, Notes, and Introduction
to the 1983 French Edition
by Jean-Nol Jeanneney

Translated from the French
with Additional Text and Annotation
by Michele McKay Aynesworth

Foreword by Robert O. Paxton

This book is a publication of

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

Originally published as Une saison gte: Journal de la guerre et de loccupation (19391945) tabli, prsent et annot par Jean-Nol Jeanneney

1983, Librairie Arthme Fayard

English translation 2016 Michele

McKay Aynesworth

This English translation was made possible by generous grants from the Kittredge Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rist, Charles, 18741955.

[Saison gte. English]

Season of infamy : a diary of war and occupation,

1939-1945 / Charles Rist ;

translated from the French with additional text and annotation by Michele McKay Aynesworth ; foreword by Robert O. Paxton ; compilation, notes, and introduction to the 1983 French edition by Jean-Nol Jeanneney.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-253-01944-8 (cl : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-253-01951-6 (eb) 1. Rist, Charles, 1874-1955 Diaries. 2. World War, 1939-1945 Personal narratives, French. 3. World War, 1939-1945 France. 4. France History German occupation, 1940-1945. 5. Diplomats France Diaries. 6. Economists France Diaries. I. Aynesworth, Michele McKay, 1947 translator. II. Jeanneney, Jean Nol, 1942 compiler. III. Title. IV. Title: Diary of war and occupation, 19391945.

D811.R 56513 2016

940.53'44092 dc23

[B]

2015035243

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This translation is dedicated to Michelle Rist (19322010), Colas Rist (19402014), and the other members of the Rist family for whom Charles Rist wrote his wartime diary and whose enthusiasm and support for the publication in English have been unflagging.

But how, in this season of infamy, can we believe anyone talking about himself?

MONTAIGNE, OF GIVING THE LIE, IN ESSAYS QUOTED BY CHARLES RIST, 17 JUNE 1941

Later people will say of those in the Vichy regime: some acted
shamefully, others treacherously, and all of them, abjectly.

CHARLES RIST, 17 APRIL 1942

by Robert O. Paxton

by Jean-Nol Jeanneney

by Jean-Nol Jeanneney

ROBERT O. PAXTON

BAD TIMES MAKE FOR GOOD DIARIES. FRANCE EXPERIENCED ITS worst time since the Black Death of 1381 with defeat by the German army in MayJune 1940, followed by a military occupation until August 1944. Humiliation was followed by cold, hunger, and internal division. On one side was the collaborationist government of the World War I hero Marshal Philippe Ptain, located at Vichy, a spa town in the southern hills of the Auvergne, while Paris was occupied by the Germans. On the other side was a growing opposition. The opposition itself was divided between underground Resistance movements within occupied France and the Free French government-in-exile in London (in Algiers after summer 1943). The two oppositions were gradually pulled together by the imperious personality of General Charles de Gaulle. Marshal Ptain had personally brought France into an armistice with Germany in June 1940, and he was determined to maintain French neutrality under the armistice even when the Germans exceeded their allotted powers. De Gaulle thundered on the BBC that the armistice was illegal and that the true France, which he embodied, was still at war with Germany. An increasing number of French people listened to him, and the Vichy and German police increasingly tracked them.

The wartime diary of Charles Rist, first published in France in 1983, appears here in English to join other classic diaries of this period such as Jean Guhennos Diary of the Dark Years, Marc Blochs Strange Defeat, and Hlne Berrs Journal. These four diaries are very different, each one the product of a strong mind and particular circumstances. But they are similar in their acute powers of observation, their moral exigency, and their eloquence. Guhenno, a writer and literature professor in preparatory classes for university applicants, employed formidable powers of intellectual and ethical judgment as he examined the occupation and Vichys responses to it from an outsiders perspective. He was a true recalcitrant, refusing, exceptionally, to publish anything at all during the occupation except in the underground press, but, then, he had his professors salary. Marc Blochs Strange Defeat is not, properly speaking, a diary at all, but a commentary written down in white heat during the weeks following the military campaign of 1940 in which Bloch, an internationally celebrated medieval historian, had served as a reserve staff officer. He was shot by the Germans in June 1944 for Resistance activity. Hlne Berr, a university student, chronicled the ever tightening noose around Jews in occupied Paris. Her diary stops abruptly on 15 February 1944, shortly before she was taken off to her death in Auschwitz.

Former participants in the Vichy government also wrote a host of self-exculpatory memoirs after the Liberation of 1944, usually amending their accounts with the advantages of hindsight. Charles Rists diary differs even more sharply from that genre. It seems to be a fully authentic record of what he was thinking and doing each day. Dr. Aynesworth, who had access to the original handwritten pages, has verified the authenticity of the text and explained clearly what she has restored to the French edition of 1983 (see A Note from the Translator Regarding the English Text).

Charles Rist observed the travails of occupied France from a perspective that was unique for being simultaneously inside and outside the French power elite. Rists life and professional accomplishments are expertly presented below by Jean-Nol Jeanneney, a prominent French historian and sometime government official whose father was a close colleague of Charles Rist. I need point out only that Rist was a highly respected economist who began in academia and moved into government service and then onto the boards of important French and foreign banks and businesses. He knew Marshal Ptain and many ministers and high Vichy officials personally. He belonged to an inner circle of experts who were taught to believe that serving the State is a high calling, and he was prepared on two occasions to serve the Vichy State. The first occasion, a report on prewar economic policy for the Vichy governments trial of the French prewar leadership of 1940 (a proceeding that Rist disdained) was minor (see diary entry for 11 May 1942). The second occasion, Rists proposed economic mission to Washington and eventual appointment as Vichy French ambassador to the United States, did not work out, as Rist discovered the preference of Admiral Franois Darlan, Ptains prime minister, for a German victory rather than a British one, and his scorn for American military potential, views repugnant to Rist. At the same time, Rist had considerable doubts about the Resistance and de Gaulles Free French, although his eldest son, Jean, was active in the Resistance, as will be seen below.