[Peace-discuss] Violence after occupation

[C. G. Estabrook]

*It's Robert Aron, not Raymond.  Different people. And "reactionary" is a bit 
strong. RAYMOND Aron was a liberal in the European sense; a lifelong friend and 
intellectual opponent of Sartre, but not always a backer of De Gaulle or the 
French right.  (He was first recommended to me in a class by Stanley Hoffman, 
leading scholar of modern French politics and no reactionary.)

*791 were executed in seven years "within a fairly honest legal system"; BUT

*40,000 presumed collaborators were killed in "the turmoil and bloodletting of 
civil strife." (Even De Gaulle's government admitted that at least 10,000 had 
been killed extra-legally, and they of course had reason to minimize the 
number.) The equivalent in the US today would be well over a quarter of a 
million.  Sounds like a bloodbath to me. --CGE


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> 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
>