[Peace-discuss] Violence after occupation

[Morton K. Brussel]

There seems to be a large disconnect in the numbers quoted blow.  
Raymond Aron is not the most reliable figure to believe, a  
reactionary. 791 executions is bad enough , but I wouldn't call it a  
bloodbath, especially since much was done via court procedures. True,  
there were also public retributions—women having their heads shaved  
and marched through the streets in disgrace because of their relations  
with the Nazis. But there was nothing resembling the turmoil and  
bloodletting of civil strife.

After a war and occupation, there inevitably are violent feelings  
regarding those who collaborated with the enemy/occupants. This  
occurred certainly in France, as in Vietnam, Norway, the Netherlands,  
Czechoslovakia, … and may take place in Iraq. Whether this results in  
unbridled civic strife or within a fairly honest legal system makes a  
lot of difference.

What does it mean to be a traitor?

--mkb



On Apr 13, 2009, at 12:20 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> Robert Aron, in his Histoire de l'épuration in the 1960s, estimated  
> the popular executions at 40,000. (The French population in 1945 was  
> 40 million).
>
> On the official side, Charles de Gaulle established on June 26 and  
> June 27, 1944, "commissions d'épuration," which condemned  
> approximatively 120,000 people.  From 1944 to 1951, official courts  
> in France sentenced 6,763 people to death (3,910 in absentia) for  
> treason and other offenses; 791 executions were actually carried out  
> (i.e., an average of more than two a week). More common was  
> “national degradation,” a loss of face and civil rights, which was  
> meted out to 49,723 people.  (Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of  
> Europe Since 1945 [2007], p. 46.)  --CGE