Bronzes to Bullets: Vichy and the Destruction of French Public Statuary, 1941–1944 9780804779715

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Bronzes to Bullets

Bronzes to Bullets Vichy and the Destruction of French Public Statuary, 1941–1944

Kirrily Freeman

Stanford University Press Stanford, California

Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2009 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. This book has been published with the assistance of Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Freeman, Kirrily. Bronzes to bullets : Vichy and the destruction of French public statuary, 1941–1944 / Kirrily Freeman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8047-5889-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. France--History--German occupation, 1940–1945. 2. Bronze--War use-France. 3. World War, 1939–1945--Destruction and pillage--France. 4. World War, 1939–1945--Economic aspects--France. 5. Public sculpture, French--20th century. 6. Art and state--France--History--20th century. 7. Art and society-France--History--20th century. I. Title. DC397.F73 2009 944.081'6--dc22 2008026616 Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 11/13.5 Adobe Garamond

To my parents

Contents

List of Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgments

xiii

List of Abbreviations 1 Introduction

xv 1

Part I  The Economics of Exploitation 2 “An Important Source of Metal”: The Context of Vichy’s Metal “Mobilization”

10

3 “The Union of Art and Industry”: Vichy’s Bronze Mobilization Campaign

47

Part II  The Politics of Patrimony 4 “The Expression of Us All, Young and Old”: Public Perceptions of the Bronze Mobilization Campaign 5 “Pedestals Dedicated to Absence”: The Symbolic Impact of the Bronze Mobilization Campaign

90

138

viii  Contents

6 Conclusion: “The ‘Saint-Bartholomew’ of Statues”? The Bronze Mobilization Campaign in French Memory and Historiography

171

Notes

191

Bibliography

233

Index

239

Illustrations

Figures Figure 1

The Partition of France, 1940–1944

19

Figure 2

GIRM Regional Delegations

27

Figure 3

Demolition Centers and Tributary Zones

27

Figure 4

German Imports of French Bronze Derived from Statues and Monuments, 1942

50

Figure 5

The Bronze Bureaucracy, 1941–1942

54

Figure 6

Percentage of Statues Removed per Department, October 1941–March 1942

55

Bronze Mobilization in Paris by Arrondissement, October 1941–March 1942

129

Figure 7

Tables Table 1

GIRM Nonferrous Metal Mobilization Campaigns

26

Table 2

Nonferrous Metal Mobilization Campaigns, August 1942–December 1944

30

Nonferrous Metal Mobilization Campaigns, Paris, August 1942–July 1944

31

Copper-Wine Campaign Summary

34

Table 3 Table 4

x  Illustrations

Table 5

Copper and Bronze Stocks in ROGES Dumps, April 30, 1945

49

Monthly Shipments of Metal Derived from Bronze Statuary, GIRM to ROGES, 1942

50

Table 7

Demolition Centers and Their Tributary Regions

56

Table 8

Companies Hired for the Demolition of Bronze Statues and Monuments

57

Mobilization by GIRM Delegations, February–November 1943

80

Plate 1

Mobilization of nonferrous metal in Puy-de-Dôme

45

Plate 2

Scrap metal collection in Puy-de-Dôme

45

Plate 3

Transporting scrap metal in Puy-de-Dôme

46

Plate 4

Church bells in scrap yard, Hamburg

46

Plate 5

Robert Surcouf, Saint-Malo

85

Plate 6

Jacques Cartier, Saint-Malo

85

Plate 7

Jean Leperdit, Rennes

86

Plate 8

Colonne Dupuy (Dama Tolosa), Toulouse

86

Plate 9

St. Etienne Fountain, Toulouse

87

Plate 10

Fontaine de l’Observatoire, Paris

87

Plate 11

Maréchal Ney, Paris

88

Plate 12

Medici Fountain, Luxembourg Gardens, Paris

88

Plate 13

La Savoyarde (La Sasson), Chambéry

89

Plate 14

Joan of Arc, Paris

89

Plate 15

Tyssandier d’Escous, Salers

133

Plate 16

Mistral, Arles

134

Plate 17

Le Discobole, Aurillac

134

Plate 18

Monument to Gambetta, Paris

135

Table 6

Table 9

Plates

Illustrations  xi

Plate 19

Sergent Bobillot, Paris

135

Plate 20

Etienne Dolet, Paris

136

Plate 21

République, place de la République, Paris

136

Plate 22

Frédéric Le Play, Paris

137

Plate 23

Empty pedestal of Etienne Dolet

137

Plate 24

Replacement bust of Armand Silvestre, Toulouse

163

Plate 25

Empty pedestal, Toulouse

163

Plate 26

Pope Gerbert, Aurillac

164

Plate 27

Crocodiles, place de la Nation, Paris

164

Plate 28

Replacement bust of Maupassant, Rouen

165

Plate 29

Jean Jaurès, Toulouse

165

Plate 30

Stone replica of Rameau, Dijon

166

Plate 31

Base of statue of François Arago, Paris

166

Plate 32

Base of bust of Charles Lenoir, Rennes

167

Plate 33

Monument to Armand Silvestre, Toulouse

167

Plate 34

Former monument to Armand Silvestre, Toulouse

168

Plate 35

Inscription on monument to Armand Silvestre, Toulouse

168

Plate 36

The Glory of Toulouse

169

Plate 37

Fountain, Grand Rond, Toulouse

169

Plate 38

La Poésie Romane, Toulouse

170

Plate 39

Graffiti, St. Michel Fountain, Paris, November 2002

170

Plate 40

Place Vendôme, Paris

189

Plate 41

Beaumarchais, Paris

189

Acknowledgments

to be able to acknowledge so many people for their support and assistance in the preparation of this book. The project began as a PhD dissertation at the University of Waterloo, Canada. I am very grateful to the faculty and staff of the History Department there for the support and encouragement they provided during my four years in the Tri-University Graduate Programme. I am also grateful to the University of Waterloo Graduate Studies Office and the Tri-University Programme in History for funding that enabled me to present my early findings at conferences in the United Kingdom and France. The Society for Study of French History and the Royal Historical Society also provided funding for research and conference presentations. The bulk of the research for the book was made possible by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. In France, I benefited greatly from the hospitality and expertise of the staffs of the departmental and municipal archives in Rennes, Rouen, Aurillac, Saint-Malo, Dijon, Clermont-Ferrand, Toulouse, and Marseille. I would like to thank, in particular, Bruno Isbled in Rennes, Mme Roelly in Dijon, Chantal Pagès in Toulouse, and Catherine Dehays in Rouen for their assistance and enthusiasm. For the permission to reproduce images in their collection, I wish to thank the Public Record Office in London, the Departmental Archives in Cantal, the Departmental Archives for Haute-Garonne, and the BnF, Paris. Angela Gosmann has been a gracious and generous host during my many stays in Paris. Germaine Poujet also deserves special thanks for sharing his research and his knowledge It is a privilege

xiii

xiv  Acknowledgments

of the occupation in Cantal. Dominique Veillon offered suggestions and words of encouragement and gave generously of her time when I visited the IHTP. This project has had many supporters to whom I owe a special debt. Susan Douglas and Erich Haberer provided valuable suggestions and support throughout. Paul Smith gave me the opportunity to present and publish my work early on. I am particularly grateful for his thoughtful feedback. Eric Jennings also offered invaluable advice and encouragement in the daunting process of turning the dissertation into the book. Jane Nicholas’ friendship saw me through more than one crisis. I can’t begin to thank Lynne Taylor for all that she has done as a mentor, advocate, and friend. Lynne was there at every step with a critical eye, an encouraging word, or a pint of beer as the occasion warranted. I could not have asked for a better supervisor, and I’m thrilled that our collaboration will continue as colleagues. I have been equally fortunate at my new home in the History Department at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax. Such a warm, collegial, supportive atmosphere is surely rare, and I feel very lucky to be here. I would like to thank, in particular, Mike Vance, John Reid, and Tim Stretton for giving so generously of their time and their considerable expertise. I am especially grateful to Tim for his mentorship and support. Many thanks also to Marlene Singer for helping me settle in. My time at Saint Mary’s has been enriched considerably by the friendship and encouragement of my new faculty cohort. I’m fortunate to have such wonderful friends. I would also like to acknowledge Saint Mary’s Office of Graduate Studies and Research for funding that made it possible to include many images in the book. At Stanford University Press, Norris Pope, Emily-Jane Cohen, and Emily Smith have been a pleasure to work with. I am grateful to Robin Gold for a fine job of editing the manuscript. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Colin. Although most of the tables, figures, and illustrations have benefited considerably from his intervention, it’s for his emotional and intellectual support that I am so thankful. He has stood unflinchingly with me throughout this endeavor—through all kinds of upheaval and chaos—and I am certain that I could not have done it without him. To our lovely little boy Theo, thank you for waiting until Mom had the manuscript in the mail before making an appearance. This book is dedicated to my parents, Don and Dawn Freeman, with love.

Abbreviations

BMO

Bulletin Municipal Officiel

BnF

Bibliothèque nationale de France

CHAN

Centre Historique des Archives Nationales, Paris

FO

British Foreign Office

GIRM

Groupement pour l’Importation et Répartition des Métaux (Group for the Import and Distribution of Metals)

JO

Journal Officiel

OCRPI

Office Centrale de Répartition des Produits Industriels (Central Office for the Distribution of Industrial Products)

OKH

Oberkommando des Heeres (Army High Command)

OKW

Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Armed Forces High Command)

OSS

U.S. Office of Strategic Services

PRO

Public Record Office, Kew

ROGES

Rohstoffhandelsgesellschaft (Raw Material Trading Company)

SNCF

Société Nationale des Chemins de fer

STO

Service du Travail Obligatoire

xv

Bronzes to Bullets

1 Introduction

We, Marshal of France, Head of the French State . . . decree: Article 1—The removal of statues and monuments in copper alloy, located in the public domain and in administrative buildings, which are not of artistic or historic interest, will proceed. Article 2—A commission will be created in each department to determine the statues and monuments to be conserved by reason of their artistic or historic character . . . Article 3—The removed metal objects will be made available to the Secretary of State for Industrial Production so that the constituent metal may enter the cycle of industrial or agricultural production. Ph. Pétain, Vichy, October 11, 19411

A short distance from the Place Denfert-Rochereau, down a tree-lined Parisian boulevard, one stumbles upon a strange marker, a stone mass inscribed “F. Arago, 1786–1853, Souscription Nationale.” This monument, though popular with pigeons, attracts little attention otherwise. Few passers-by, if they notice it at all, would pause to wonder whether a statue had ever graced its top. Some longtime resident of the quartier might remember that the pedestal once supported a bronze homage to the scientist and politician François Arago by the sculptor Oliva, raised by national public subscription in 1893.2 Some may even recall the statue’s removal on a cold December morning in 1941.3 But for most, the story behind this empty pedestal remains unknown. The same is true for scores of lost and forgotten metal monuments all over France. Between October 1941 and August 1944, French cities, towns, and villages lost most of their public bronze statuary. Conservative estimates of the number of works destroyed range between 1,527 and 1,750 decorative and commemorative statues and monuments in the public domain 1

2  Chapter 1

(war memorials and monuments on church property were excluded).4 This widespread removal and destruction of artwork touched almost every French community, and significantly undermined a form of civic artwork that had dominated French municipal landscapes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Despite public forgetfulness, the fact that bronze statuary was ­melted down during the Second World War is relatively well known and appears anecdotally in a number of histories of the period and memoirs of contemporaries, as well as in art historical studies of French monuments.5 References to melted statues are frequently marshalled to invoke the impact of Nazi occupation, the extent of the collaborationist Vichy government’s social and moral revolution, and the turbulent climate of wartime France. But the campaign itself has only very recently been the topic of any sustained scholarly inquiry.6 In early encounters with this episode, I assumed, like many others, that the destruction of French bronzes was a German initiative. I also assumed that this programme must surely represent a reactionary attempt on Vichy’s part to reshape French commemorative practices. It seemed obvious that this was a case of cultural and historical revisionism, an expression of Vichy’s National Revolution in public art policy. Documents in the archives, however, seemed to support neither contention.7 I saw very little German presence in the correspondence surrounding this campaign, and the legislation and supporting documentation that emanated from Vichy revolved almost entirely around questions of metal recovery. I began, therefore, to investigate the possibility that my assumptions about the melting of French bronze statues—informed by prevailing historical and popular notions of long standing—were, in fact, a misinterpretation. What the archives did reveal is an episode that intersects with a number of contentious issues that relate to the history of wartime France and occupied Europe, and to much broader questions that are the domain of social and cultural history. At work here are the politics and economics of the Nazi occupation and exploitation of France, as well as the politics and ideology of the Vichy regime in the various stages of its relationship with Germany, and its relationship with the French people. This is, in part, a study of the French administration in both the occupied and unoccupied zones, and its negotiation of a variety of conflicting goals and priorities, as well as its navigation of the strange and perilous terrain between the demands of the occupying powers and Vichy’s assertions of sovereignty.

Introduction  3

This is also, however, a study of the political, symbolic, and emotional value of public art. It testifies to the role of public artwork in the construction of local, regional, and national identities, and to a politics of patrimony that runs much deeper than official cultural policy as outlined and implemented by the state. We see, in the public reaction to the dismantling of French bronze statues, the local dynamics that shaped and propelled this politics of patrimony. The impact of the bronze episode on French communities and their reaction to this impact reveal, therefore, a range of issues surrounding the politics of commemoration, and the varied and shifting relationships between art and the construction of memory and community. The destruction of French bronze statues and monuments also raises another fascinating dynamic. The demolition of public statuary, and the glaring emptiness that was the legacy of this episode, provide an unusual and particularly interesting example of the ways in which loss and absence color commemorative practices and cultural memory. The ways in which French communities dealt with this loss and absence during the war and in the postwar period raise much broader questions of the symbolic and physical reconstruction of France in the wake of Vichy and the Occupation, and highlight the complex interplay of remembering and forgetting that characterize the way in which “the dark years” have been dealt with in French memory and historiography.8 The most remarkable feature of this episode, however, is the public reaction to the French government’s campaign to dismantle and smelt down bronze statuary. In the French provinces in particular, there was an outpouring of vehement and energetic protest. Private citizens and their public representatives condemned this initiative vociferously, unequivocally, and often with important political consequences. In wartime France, whether under Nazi occupation or Vichy supervision, protest of any kind was a perilous endeavor. Nevertheless, French communities took strident measures to protect their public statuary, to protest its removal, and to condemn its destruction. The striking exception, however, was the public reaction in Paris. Parisians did not demonstrate anywhere near the same measure of opposition to the loss of public artwork as other French communities did. This accounts, perhaps, for the nature of historical attention previously given to this episode. With one exception, the destruction of French bronze statuary between 1941 and 1944 has been treated as phenomenon that principally affected the capital.9 And because, in Paris, the

4  Chapter 1

statues were not particularly missed, the symbolic, political, and cultural implications of the loss of this artwork have remained largely unexplored.10 Although the dismantled statues were not missed in Paris, they were desperately missed in the rest of France. Rather than disregard this phenomenon as an expression of the unsophisticated taste and backward provincialism of smaller French communities, it seems that much can be gleaned from the outpouring of protest that this campaign generated throughout France. Indeed, investigation of the locally rooted, small-scale social action of French communities faced with the loss of bronze monuments has proven to be very revealing.11 The popular response to Vichy’s destruction of statuary is particularly interesting for what it says about the hopes and fears of the French population during this time of crisis and instability. The overwhelmingly negative public reaction to the campaign in the French provinces was due to people’s pride in the prestige, culture, and history of their petite patrie. Many of the figures commemorated in local statuary were relatively obscure, often unknown in other parts of France, but celebrities in the towns and villages of their birth and an integral part of the lives of ordinary people. Françoise Gaspard, for example, describes her own affection for the monuments of Dreux in her introduction to A Small City in France: Like most children who grow up in a fairly small town, I walked those streets every day . . . I walked from my parents’ house to my grandparents’ and on Thursdays to the municipal library and the Cercle Laïque. Those streets were an education . . . The Place Rotrou, rue Rotrou, and the Lycée Rotrou all honour the most illustrious of Dreux’s native sons. When I attended the Sorbonne, I was chagrined to discover that most of my fellow students had no idea who Jean de Rotrou was . . . [But he had] figured in my civic as well as my literary education [growing up in Dreux,] and each time I pass his statue I pay my respects.12

The depth of public reaction to the destruction of monuments to such figures as Jean de Rotrou testifies to the genuine affection felt for these statues in French communities.13 From today’s perspective, we might identify more with Robert Musil’s statement, “Nothing is as invisible as a monument.”14 A popular syndicated cartoonist has satirized commemorative statuary with the depiction of a “monument to the forgotten something or other.”15 And, certainly, many Parisians in the 1940s viewed the removal of statues with relief. Despite this, we must not lose sight of the genuine attachment, born of pride and affection, that many communities felt for their statues.

Introduction  5

­ onuments were often—by virtue of their placement in squares, parks, and M boulevards—participants in the daily life of the community. Market days, festivals, parades, and celebrations took place at their feet. Statues marked meeting places and participated in ritual. For many communities, statues were much more than part of the urban landscape, they were deeply tied to the emotional life of the town and its inhabitants. The reaction to the destruction of statuary, as a result, assumed a strikingly emotional tenor. Also striking is the range of opposition that was mobilized against this government initiative. Opponents of the bronze demolition campaign ranged from prominent members of Vichy’s own administration (Pétain himself intervened on several occasions to protect monuments) to clandestine Resistance networks.16 Protest ranged from highly symbolic though poignantly futile gestures such as leaving wreaths and bouquets on empty pedestals, to the much more perilous and proactive theft and concealment of statues slated for demolition. The picture that emerges is of a strikingly diverse spectrum of motives, methods, and vectors of protest, united in rejection of this campaign. The range of opposition to Vichy’s bronze mobilization campaign hints at the uneasy relationship between the French population and the Etat Français. One of the main dilemmas faced by historians interested in public opinion in this period is how to account for the volume of support that Vichy initially received, and the subsequent and dramatic erosion of that support. As H. R. Kedward describes, the image that Vichy projected was responsible for much of the early submission of the southern zone to the Pétainist regime.17 “The degree of [popular] conciliation [with Vichy] was mostly due to the exigencies of 1940, the charisma of Pétain, and the wide agreement that unity was better than disunity in the crisis, but much of it was also due to the peculiar potential of Vichy, compounded as it was of highly traditional social and political interests on the one hand and hopes of change and innovation on the other.”18 Jean-Marie Guillon has also suggested that the widespread popular support for Vichy in 1940 had little to do with ideology but, rather, with the image of the courageous old Maréchal, whose affection for France and solidarity with its population led him to stick it out with them in their misery, and to do his best to bring about national regeneration and liberty.19 Vichy’s own policies, the regime’s increasing vassalage to Germany, and the mounting sacrifices, privations, and indignities suffered by the French population tarnished this image, however, and increasingly undermined support for the Etat Français.

6  Chapter 1

Historians now widely acknowledge 1942 as the pivotal year in this process. The German occupation of the southern zone, increasing demands for French labor for Germany, and the increasing scarcity of goods of all kinds, had a serious impact on public opinion and distanced the French population from the Vichy regime. “Against all its declared intentions, the Vichy regime, by its internal policy alone [whose true shape and implications emerged in 1942] caused dissent and created resistance.”20 The first wave of the bronze campaign unfolded during this pivotal year and must be seen in the context of this radicalization of Vichy policy and its subsequent alienation of the French population. The French people’s reaction to the loss of bronze statues offers additional illustration of this alienation, but also locates a further explanation for it. Charles Maurras wrote of the statue campaign: We hadn’t really fully understood what the defeat meant . . . The departure of these heavy masses of non-ferrous metal made it clear; clear enough, here and there, to cause tears. And so it was really true, we had been defeated. And this obliges us to part with these [statues] whose meaning is revealed suddenly with eloquence—the honour of our country, our honour!21

The debacle of 1940 brought national humiliation; the defeat and armistice were a deep source of shame. This crisis of identity led the French population to look to Pétain in the summer of 1940 for national regeneration, but it also led them to grasp on to symbols of past achievement, grandeur, and prestige. As Kedward has illustrated so persuasively, “Much of the early occupation period can be seen as France in pursuit of its past as well as its future.”22 In the popular reaction to the destruction of bronzes, the importance of public art and commemorative statuary to the creation, definition, and sustenance of local, regional, and national identities comes to the fore. As protesters were quick to point out to Vichy, a love of the nation stems from a love of the region. In the glories of the petite patrie national salvation would be found. How could the Etat Français—whose greatest ambition was the regeneration of France—so undermine French patrimony by eradicating these symbols of local pride and honor? Another feature of the popular reaction to the destruction of bronzes also underscores this yearning for unity. Much of the public opposition to the bronze campaign was fuelled by rumor. Rumors circulated about which monuments would be targeted and when but, even more importantly, about the purpose of the mobilization campaign itself, and the

Introduction  7

destination and eventual use of the metal derived from statuary. At the heart of the campaign was a grand deception by the Vichy regime. The metal derived from statues was destined for the German armaments industry, and the French population suspected as much. But the French government insisted that the metal would be used exclusively for agriculture and industry in France. This deceit was aimed not solely at the French population, but at the bronze campaign’s administration itself. Apart from the main architects of the program, it appears that all levels of government and industry involved in the campaign were instructed that they were working in the interests of the French economy. Vichy’s propaganda apparatus worked diligently—with seemingly little awareness of its duplicity—to counter rumors that French bronzes were being turned into German bullets. Nevertheless, the rumors were widespread and in themselves provide a source of insight into life in wartime France. According to Guillon, rumors—“News passed on which might be true, or false, but which [is] always credible in the context of the moment, and meaningful for those who spread [it]”—are particularly valuable as a barometer of public fears, as a measure of political engagement, and as a way of penetrating collective imagination.23 Rumors are, naturally, particularly important in times of crisis and trauma. Rumors in wartime France were “a way of calling into question that which is disseminated officially, which is not believed because of an age-old feeling, accentuated in these years, of not being told the whole truth, of being kept in the dark and of being lied to.”24 Rumors were evidence of a widespread and systematic suspicion toward the regime and, according to Guillon, represent “a form of fighting, however meager”: This means that rumours played a role in the politicization of a large part of the French population as it rediscovered some common beliefs about the future. They helped to reconstruct a shared identity, affecting particularly milieus and individuals for whom politics was not a primary concern.25

The most important function of rumors was the role they played in the formation of a sense of common purpose.26 There is a feeling of fraternity and community inherent in the spreading of rumors, a discourse of “us” versus “them” that fosters a sense of unity. It is, in many ways, the search for a sense of unity, a cohesive and unifying national identity born of regional patriotism, that both underlies and defines popular protest against the bronze mobilization campaign in France.

8  Chapter 1

Vichy’s disingenuous treatment of the campaign to demolish French bronze statuary also testifies to its slim margin of maneuver. The Etat Français’ fragile sovereignty, the demands of the French population, and the increasing constraints placed on France by the Germans meant that Pétain’s regime had few alternatives. As a result, a strain developed between the need to satisfy demands for metal and the need to placate public opinion. This dichotomy structured the bronze campaign and is reflected, therefore, in the organization of this study. Part One—entitled “The Economics of Exploitation”—deals with the context, the origins, the structure, and the implementation of the campaign to remove and re-smelt bronze statues throughout France. Chapter 2 outlines the economic and political context that made nonferrous metal recovery initiatives necessary, looking particularly at French supplies of copper and at Germany’s hunger for this strategic raw material. Chapter 3 describes the organization and functioning of what might be called “the bronze bureaucracy” (those branches of the French administration responsible for overseeing the removal and re-smelting of bronze statues and monuments) and the process of the dismantling and subsequent destruction of statuary throughout France. The emphasis in this first section is on the removal of bronze statuary as a wartime metal recovery measure. The aim, therefore, is to demonstrate that the motivation for what Vichy termed “the mobilization of bronzes” was primarily economic. Part Two—“The Politics of Patrimony”— answers the question that inevitably arises from the contention that the impetus behind the bronze mobilization campaign was strictly the recovery of nonferrous metals. The commemorative impulse is an inherently political one, and so the destruction of commemorative statues and monuments must also contain a political dimension. Furthermore, the sanctioned and organized destruction of artwork by a reactionary and revanchist regime in a time of war and occupation is unavoidably political. The second half of the book aims, therefore, to demonstrate that the political dimension of the destruction of bronze statues lies in the impact of the campaign on the French population. Popular responses to the campaign were shaped by the politics of commemoration at the local level, and an investigation of this reveals distinctions between public perceptions and popular responses in Paris and in the French provinces. Chapter 4 investigates the public response to the campaign in Paris and throughout France. This response was inspired by myriad political and ideological considerations, but took the form primar-

Introduction  9

ily of a discourse of regionalism outside the capital, and of “statuemania” in Paris itself.27 Chapter 5 investigates the symbolic impact of the campaign during the war and in the postwar period through a discussion of the relationships between memory and absence. The ways in which French communities dealt with the absences created by empty pedestals revealed local concerns that ranged from mourning communities’ losses to embracing progress and modernity through reconstruction. Finally, the conclusion looks at the way the episode of the destruction of bronze statues has been written in French memory and historiography, highlighting two of the central myths of the Vichy Syndrome.28 This study aims primarily, therefore, to place the bronze mobilization campaign in the economic context of the German occupation of France, as well as in the national political context of Vichy’s policy of collaboration, but also in the cultural context of French national patrimony. In my view, these contexts make this an event that had important consequences for French cultural heritage and is much more than simply a chapter in the history of the urban décor of Paris. Furthermore, this episode suggests considerable nuance in the relationships between the Etat Français, the French administration, and the French population. The episode reveals center-periphery tensions within the French administration and in popular sentiment, highlights conflict between branches of the French bureaucracy that are normally considered as having worked closely, and provides another example of the contradictions between the words and deeds of Vichy, particularly in the regime’s discourse of decentralization that was accompanied by such vigorous centralizing tendencies. This episode also offers a number of insights into French regionalism in the 1940s. The regionalist sentiment expressed by the French population in protest to the removal of their statuary is not only of the reactionary Maurassian version embraced by Vichy. The discourse of regionalism was also mobilized against the regime, demonstrating that regionalist ideas permeated the entire political spectrum, and were as capable of inspiring resistance to as compliance with Pétain’s National Revolution. Finally, the ramifications of this one relatively minor episode in the history of wartime France underscore the value of an interdisciplinary perspective. The economic, the political, the social, the cultural, and even the existential converge in the tale of France’s lost bronzes to forge a compelling and—one hopes—enlightening story.

2 “An Important Source of Metal” The Context of Vichy’s Metal “Mobilization”

Shortages of non-ferrous metals are endangering French industry. Various precautionary measures have been taken [to replenish French stocks]. Towards this aim, the Government has instituted a [scrap] metal [salvage] campaign . . . but there exists another important source of metal, in the form of monuments and statues in bronze that adorn numerous public spaces.1

With these words ,

in a report to Marshal Philippe Pétain in August 1941, Admiral François Darlan—Pétain’s second-in-command— proposed the expansion of the nonferrous metal salvage campaign to include the “mobilization” of public bronze statuary. The metal recovery system subsequently implemented by the Vichy government under the law of October 11, 1941, by which French public statuary became susceptible to destruction by the state was, as Darlan’s statement alludes, entirely economically motivated. At its core, Vichy’s destruction of French bronze statuary was provoked by a need to procure strategic nonferrous metals. “Mobilization” (Vichy’s term for the campaign) was—rather than a ­Nazi-style euphemism—in fact an accurate reflection of the way the Vichy government viewed these measures. France’s “population” of statues presented, in these exceptional and extenuating circumstances, an untapped yet easily exploitable resource. Vichy’s decision to smelt its bronze statuary into component metals (bronze contains approximately 80 percent copper and 20 percent tin), and then ship these raw materials to Germany for the production of armaments was conceived with a view to rectifying copper shortages and to meeting German Armistice demands. But what were the circumstances that led to these drastic measures? What was the background of Vichy’s fateful 10

The Context of Vichy’s Metal “Mobilization”  11

decision to exploit its public statuary as a source of nonferrous metal? The context of the bronze mobilization campaign will be outlined in three sections: the sources and consumption of copper in France and Germany in the period before the Second World War; Vichy, the Franco-German Armistice, and the German exploitation of the French economy; and, finally, the system and structure of Vichy’s various scrap and salvage campaigns, and the fateful choice that led to the destruction of French statuary.

Sources and Consumption of Copper in France and Germany The sources and consumption of copper in France and Germany in the period before the Second World War form the background of this study of the destruction of French bronze statues. In investigating the context of the removal and smelting of bronzes, we must first consider the domestic need for and consumption of copper (the main constituent metal in bronze) in both countries. Of the nonferrous metals, copper was the most significant and the most difficult to procure for the French and German economies. Copper is essential for modern infrastructures—its conductive capacity makes it indispensable for electrical industries and communications. Also a vital strategic raw material, copper is used in everything from munitions casings to precision navigational equipment and is therefore a resource of great importance to the military. France’s rate of consumption of copper throughout the period of the Third Republic reveals an econ­ omy committed to industrial growth and expansion. Nowhere was the new French hunger for copper more strikingly displayed than in the dancing lights and clanging machines of those central Republican institutions, the Universal Expositions of 1889 and 1900. The story of German hunger for copper centers, however, on another era. For Germany, copper would be one of the main ingredients in the Third Reich’s single-minded pursuit of its primary goal, rearmament. The drive toward industrialization in France was embraced by the Third Republic. The Republican government was committed to social and economic progress through scientific and technological innovation. The two major universal expositions of the nineteenth century—the 1889 and 1900 Paris International Exhibitions—encapsulated Republican ideology and ­offer the historian fascinating snapshots of Republican politics and policy that form the background to the events that will be outlined in this study.

12  Chapter 2

The Paris exhibition of 1900 offers us a picture of a France enthralled with technological innovations. The highlight of the exposition was the ­Palais de l’Electricité. Like the Palais des Machines, its counterpart at the 1889 Exposition, the Palais de l’Electricité took a place of honor on the Champs de Mars. This fairyland of light, sound, and movement represented—to the multitudes that flocked to marvel at its wonders—modernity, progress, and the promise of the new century ahead. It symbolized the culmination of a century of innovation and discovery, and of scientific and industrial progress, as well as the triumph of humans over nature, the glory of the Republic of Progress, and the international dominance of Western Europe. In the playing lights and dancing fountains, visitors were persuaded of the many ways in which one extraordinary discovery—electricity—would forever change and enhance their lives. Although electric light had been known for decades in Europe, it had never before been used to illuminate an entire city, giving an entirely new character to its monuments and boulevards. In 1900, Paris truly became the City of Light.2 A number of scholars have emphasized the role of the international exhibitions as window dressings diverting the public’s attention from the failures of the Third Republic. The expositions, like the Empire, were a smokescreen, if not compensation, for political embarrassment, diplo­ matic humiliation, and economic stagnation.3 Their purpose was definite, and their message clear. French and foreign visitors were to be reminded of the power, vitality, and glory of Republican France. Despite scandals and setbacks—the exhibitions asserted—France was still a major power, its industrial and imperial expansion a force to be reckoned with. This industrial and imperial expansion was reflected in the new systems of transportation and communications that linked rural areas and urban centers, provincial towns and the national capital, the colonies, and the metropole. By 1900, the first phase of the Paris metro was operational, a national rail network had been in place for more than a decade; in Paris, Lyon, and Toulouse, electric trams provided public transportation, and more than 4,000 telegraph offices connected cities and towns throughout the country, and even linked France with its North African colonies. This modernization was not without controversy, however, and particularly in the interwar period, it occasioned widespread nostalgia for a threatened ruralité. The 1931 census revealed that the French urban population had at last surpassed its rural one—proof, for many, of the nation’s

The Context of Vichy’s Metal “Mobilization”  13

alienation from its traditional roots, and cause of what was widely perceived as France’s deepening decadence. Despite crossing this threshold, however, France remained the most agricultural of the great industrial nations.4 It was perhaps, then, the increasing modernization and “rationalization” of agriculture—as much as the rural exodus—that prompted the polarization of city and countryside that pervaded interwar discourse. By the interwar period, there was a considerable expansion of mechanized farming. An official retrospective exhibition of the development of harvesting machinery had drawn large crowds to the 1900 Universal Exposition, and its self-congratulatory tone implied that the new century would bring even greater advancement.5 Indeed, the structure of farming would change considerably following the Great War with family farming giving way to larger commercial farms and agribusinesses that relied on industrial products. One of the most significant agricultural innovations of the late nineteenth century was the discovery of the fungicidal properties of copper sulphate. It had long been a custom in the Médoc to coat the leaves of grape vines along roadsides with a mixture of copper sulphate, lime, and water to prevent the theft of grapes by passersby. The French botanist Pierre-Marie-Alexis Millardet noticed in 1882 that this concoction, now commonly known as “Bordeaux mixture,” seemed to enable the vines to resist the mildew Plasmopara ­viticola, which had been accidentally introduced to Europe on vines imported from the United States and which had first appeared in France in 1878.6 As a result of Millardet’s discovery, Bordeaux mixture became the first fungicide to receive wide-scale use and is credited with having saved the French wine-growing industry.7 All of these innovations in agriculture, communications, transportation, and industry resulted in an explosion in French consumption of raw materials of all types. Coal and iron were the central resources of industrialization, but nonferrous metals, and particularly copper, were also essential to the new products being used and produced. In the interwar period, French industry consumed approximately 110,000 metric tons of raw copper per year—the sixth greatest consumption in the world after the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, and the ­Soviet Union.8 The 105,000 metric tons of new copper consumed in France in 1938 were distributed as follows: electrical industries (including the rail, telegraph, manufacturing, and electrical infrastructure) consumed 40.5 percent; the production of copper tubes, bars, and sheets for heavy

14  Chapter 2

industry consumed 20.7 percent; metal foundries and war and marine production consumed 9 percent each; and the production of copper sulphate consumed 7.3 percent.9 Although France was the sixth greatest consumer of copper, it produced none domestically. The manufacture of copper sulphate was achieved primarily through the recovery of copper scrap—France recovered 40,000 metric tons of copper scrap per year, three quarters of which was used in the manufacturing of fungicide.10 Much of the rest of the country’s copper needs had to be met through imports of raw or refined copper. Between 1936 and 1939, France imported about 20,000 metric tons of raw and refined copper per year, primarily from Chile, the United States, and the Belgian Congo.11 From June 1940, however, when France signed an armistice with Nazi Germany, most French imports, including those of nonferrous metals essential to French agriculture and industry, were cut by the Allied blockade of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Supplies of lead and zinc, which had come from French colonies in North Africa, were now inhibited by the Royal Navy, as were the supplies of copper from West Africa and the Americas upon which France had relied. Continental sources of French copper were also no longer available. Before 1940, France had obtained a significant amount of copper from French-owned mines in Yugoslavia. A French conglomerate held the exclusive rights to the Mines de Bor located in northeastern Serbia. The Bor mines were one of the leading mining enterprises in Yugoslavia, and they were one of the largest copper-producing enterprises in Europe.12 With the fall of France, however, Germany acquired control of the Compagnie Française des Mines de Bor, and the 40,000 metric tons of blister copper and small quantities of electrolytic copper it produced each year.13 Although there was a conscious German policy of eliminating the influence of foreign capital in Eastern Europe and transferring these assets to German ownership, the acquisition of the Bor mines was chiefly motivated by Germany’s hunger for resources.14 In early 1940, the French government had acquired the entire stock of Balkan copper. Less than a year later, Germany’s biggest single acquisition in the east was that of the French capital holdings in the Serbian copper mining company.15 The operation of the Bor mines was taken over by a consortium of three major German mining companies, under the direction of Franz Neuhausen, and the headquarters of the new Bor consortium—Bor Kupferbergwerke und

The Context of Vichy’s Metal “Mobilization”  15

Hütten A.G.—was located, contentiously, in Strasbourg.16 In June 1940, therefore, France found itself faced with a supply crisis. Because of the Allied blockade and the loss of French mines in the Balkans, France was forced to depend solely on its dwindling industrial stocks, stocks that were threatened by the German occupation. Germany had seen even more rapid and extensive industrialization than France had in the late nineteenth century, and Germany, too, produced no copper domestically. In the interwar period, Germany’s vital supplies of this nonferrous metal came from outside Europe and, significantly, from outside the German trading block. Like France, Germany imported most of its copper supplies from the Belgian Congo, Chile, and the United States. Germany’s yearly imports were considerably higher than those of its western neighbor, ranging between 150,000 and 200,000 metric tons of raw and refined copper per year between 1929 and 1937.17 Imports soared, however, to more than 300,000 metric tons in 1938. Bearing in mind that trade had fallen sharply as a result of the Great Depression and that since 1936—with the institution of the Four Year Plan under Hermann Göring’s direction—Germany had been pursuing a policy of autarky, these figures are significant evidence of Nazi Germany’s inexorable march to war.18 War was the essence of National Socialism. Nazi ideology saw war as a necessary condition of the health and prosperity of the German Volk and nation. As Adolf Hitler reminded the German people in 1939: “We National Socialists have our origins in war, our philosophy results from the experience of war and it will prove itself, if necessary, in war.”19 The political aim of the Nazi regime was the restoration of Germany’s great power status after the indignities of the punitive Treaty of Versailles. Everything was to be directed toward this aim, and it was to be achieved through an inculcation of the “will to arms” in the German people, and by granting absolute priority to military spending, the buildup of the armed forces being—in Hitler’s mind—the essential precondition of political power.20 The resources of the German state would therefore be directed almost entirely toward rearmament.21 Only three days after being appointed chancellor, Hitler convened a meeting of high-level military officials and outlined his program of racial purification and imperial expansion. The precondition of this program was rapid rearmament. This rearmament would enable the restoration of the borders of 1914 and the return of German colonies—territorial losses

16  Chapter 2

as a result of the Treaty of Versailles—and enable the German domination of Central Europe, which Hitler saw as essential to the survival and prosperity of the Volk. At a meeting a week later, Hitler again emphasized the absolute priority of rearmament: Germany’s future depends exclusively and solely on rebuilding the armed forces. All other expenditure has to be subordinated to the task of rearmament . . . [In] any future clash between demands of the armed forces and demands for other purposes the interest of the armed forces [must], whatever the circumstances, take precedence.22

The Third Reich made great strides toward realizing Hitler’s vision of rearmament between 1935 and 1939. In March 1935, Hitler announced male conscription and his intention of rebuilding land and air forces. In June 1935, London agreed to the construction of a German surface fleet, as well as a U-boat force. In March 1936, German troops entered the demilitarized Rhineland. By 1938, military spending accounted for 80 percent of goods and services purchased by the Reich.23 This considerable military expansion was entirely the result of Göring’s Four Year Plan implemented in 1936, designed to force the pace of rearmament and to reaffirm its absolute primacy.24 Under the Four Year Plan, Germany adopted a policy of autarky, limiting imports and developing synthetic replacements for the materials and resources it lacked domestically. In implementing the plan, however, the Third Reich soon reached the limits of its financial and material resources. One of the primary aims of the Four Year Plan had been to prepare Germany for a major European war by 1940. But the structure of the plan also meant that it would be necessary for Germany to go to war by this time to avoid national bankruptcy. Only heavy reparations—including vital raw materials—generated by a quick and victorious war could overcome Germany’s chronic shortages of raw materials. Thus the strategy of blitzkrieg, based on a theory of mobile warfare in which Germany would conduct a series of short but intensive campaigns, was devised. Although Hitler realized that Germany was unlikely to win another war of attrition, blitzkrieg was, however, as much an economic doctrine as a military one. It was a method of avoiding the huge economic commitment of total war because “It did not require any extensive building-up of the productive capacity of German industry, except in the two very important areas of synthetic fuel-oil production and synthetic rubber production.”25 The doctrine was also made necessary, however, by the Third

The Context of Vichy’s Metal “Mobilization”  17

Reich’s commitment to rapid and extensive rearmament, which was ultimately unsustainable without access to external resources.26 The German occupation of France would provide these resources because, to a great extent, economic policy in conquered France was conceived in terms of the blitzkrieg economy.27

The Franco-German Armistice, Vichy, and the German Exploitation of France The manufacturing and production capacity of French industry which, at the Armistice, had large supplies of raw materials and finished goods at its disposal, has to a very great extent, been made to serve German war production; it has rendered valuable service to the Reich and to the Armed Forces by raising considerable quantities of goods and sums of money as well as by placing a considerable output at their disposal.28 The Reich’s priorities are dominated by the imperious necessity of using, as fully as possible, the economic potential of France toward the ultimate victory of Germany.29

Germany’s most profitable occupation was that of France. The French economy was the Third Reich’s largest single source of foreign income.30 This revenue was generated by the reparations payments of 20  million reichs­marks per day that Germany demanded.31 This astronomical sum, far more than was necessary to support German occupation troops in France, provided the pretext for Germany to obtain essential raw materials, one of the most vital of which was copper. As Alan Milward rightly notes, “Of all the non-ferrous metal ores . . . copper was in much the shortest supply in 1940.”32 In fact, German national reserves of copper had been used up by the spring of 1939. By early 1940, German copper requirements could no longer be met by their almost exhausted national stocks. Given German military commitments in early 1940, this generated considerable consternation in the armed forces.33 Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch described the impending rationing of nonferrous metals as tantamount to the liquidation of the Wehrmacht’s rearmament effort.34 It comes as no surprise, then, that in the weeks following the invasion of France, Germany attempted to correct copper shortages through seizures of this vital nonferrous metal and its ores. A number of scholars emphasize the German taking of booty during this period as the primary means by which Germany obtained French industrial stocks.35 Although these seizures certainly occurred on an important scale in the summer of

18  Chapter 2

1940, by the spring of the next year, Vichy was fully complicit in the transferal of metal resources from France to Germany. Although plunder was certainly a reality of the early weeks of occupation, it was soon replaced by a more organized and formalized system of expropriation in which ­Vichy was closely involved. The story of the mobilization of French bronze statuary reveals the far greater extent of Vichy’s complicity in the German denuding of the French economy. The evolution of Franco-German economic relations from the May 1940 invasion of France and the German seizure of booty, to the October 1941 decision by Vichy to transfer metal derived from its own public statuary to German armaments factories, reveals the two key conditions for the success of German economic policy in France—the development of effective French and German administrations, and the startling degree of French sympathy with German aims for a New European Order. The Franco-German armistice was signed on June 22, 1940, in a forest clearing at Rethondes, near the town of Compiègne, in Picardie. Within the space of a few weeks, the German military had forced the capitulation of what was thought to have been the strongest army in Europe. Hitler was joyful and merry when the news of the French request for peace reached his headquarters at Bruly-le-Pêche.36 No less delightful for him was the symbolism of signing the armistice in the same railway carriage, in the same clearing, as in 1918. Hitler’s armistice objectives, however, were as pragmatic as they were symbolic. He sought primarily to prevent the French government from continuing the war from abroad and the French people from continuing it from within. His ultimate priority—in line with the doctrine of blitzkrieg—was to exact the maximum resources from France with the minimum expenditure of German force. Hitler never intended a total occupation of France and, rather, considered a German-occupied France a liability. The partition of France was devised, therefore, as a strategy of maximum economic and strategic gain for minimum military and financial investment. In a gesture that was as pragmatic as it was symbolic, the historically contested region of Alsace-Lorraine was annexed to the Reich. Similarly, the Nord-Pas-deCalais region was attached to the German army command headquartered in Brussels. These regions were buffered by a “forbidden zone” in the north and a “reserved zone” in the east. Together, these four regions— now absorbed for all intents and purposes into the economy of the ­Reich—contained a significant portion of the French industrial base with

The Context of Vichy’s Metal “Mobilization”  19

their coal and iron-ore mines, heavy industry, chemical plants, and textile mills. The rest of the country was bisected by an L-shaped demarcation line that stretched from the Spanish border into the Centre region and then east to the Swiss border just north of Lake Geneva. Thus, the richest and most densely populated areas, as well as the strategically important Channel and Atlantic coasts, fell under the German zone of occupation, and the more agrarian and sparsely populated south and southeast of the country were to be administered from Vichy. Despite the demarcation line, however, all of France and all of the French economy fed the German war effort. A Wehrmacht High Command directive of June 1940 stated, “The purpose of the Military Administration is to re-establish calm and order in the French occupied territories and to use the country’s resources for the needs of the Wehrmacht and the German war economy.”37 The German Military Administration—the Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich— would thus play a crucial role in the economic exploitation of France.

Figure 1 

The Partition of France, 1940–1944

20  Chapter 2

The German High Command, under Otto von Stülpnagel (until the spring of 1942, and subsequently under his cousin Karl-Heinrich) was headquartered in the Hôtel Majestic in Paris. Its economic section was led by Dr. Elmer Michel and oversaw all economic activity in the occupied zone and, after November 1942, throughout the entire country.38 The economic mission of the military administration was clarified by an order issued on April 1, 1941. Its task was to protect the interests of the Wehrmacht and the war effort, to adapt the French economy to the requirements of German war production, and to conduct negotiations with the French government in accordance with these aims. The same policy was instituted in the southern zone by the FrancoGerman Armistice Commission. The Armistice Commission was created at the end of June 1940, ostensibly to institute the terms of the armistice. The commission was the first channel of communication established between the former belligerents and subsequently became the primary ­organ of relations between the German Foreign Office and the new Vichy regime.39 The French delegation to the commission was, in fact, formed in Bordeaux before Pétain’s new government had even established itself in Vichy. The commission—headquartered at Wiesbaden, though with representatives in major cities in both French zones—expressed, within just a few days of its creation, the particular priority it attached to economic issues. A special Economic Delegation to the Commission was quickly formed to deal primarily with issues arising from the implementation of Article 18 of the Armistice, which stipulated that the French government would bear the costs of maintaining German occupation troops on French soil.40 The French delegation’s first priority was to lodge a protest over the proposed reparations sum of 20 million reichsmarks per day. The French sought a reduction of this amount, protesting that this enormous sum far exceeded the cost of maintaining Germany’s relatively small occupation force.41 The object of these reparations for Germany had, however, little to do with the maintenance of troops but, rather, provided Germany with the necessary pretext to obtain from France the vital resources the Nazi economy required. As head of the German Economic Delegation to the Commission, Hans Hemmen’s intention was that Germany’s economic negotiations with Vichy should go well beyond the terms of the armistice agreement: The role of the Armistice Commission was less to supervise the implementation of the articles of the Armistice than to negotiate with the French Government a whole series

The Context of Vichy’s Metal “Mobilization”  21

of extensions that were, more or less blatantly, imposed to support various [plans for the exploitation of the French economy] throughout the years of occupation.42

In the very first meeting of the Armistice Commission, the French delegates got the impression that the economic priorities that motivated the military administration in the occupied zone would be applied equally to Vichy’s jurisdiction.43 It became immediately clear that where the weak situation of the Vichy government could be used to apply greater pressure on France, Germany would do so to reach its primary goal of placing as much of the economic potential of the unoccupied territory as possible in the service of the German war economy.44 The process of “clearing” acted as a vehicle for harnessing the French economy. A note of August 8, 1940, from Hemmen to Yves Bréart de ­Boisanger, governor of the Bank of France and delegate to the Armistice Commission, outlined the functioning of this process—in short, the value of French exports to Germany was to be subtracted from the occupation costs. On November 14, 1940, Hemmen and de Boisanger signed the Franco-German payment compensation accord (Accord de compensation pour les payements franco-allemands) at Wiesbaden, ratifying the system of clearing that would last until 1944.45 By autumn 1940, therefore, Germany had, for all intents and pur­ poses, the French economy at its disposal. The extent of the French economic contribution to the German war economy was, however, due primarily to the extensive cooperation granted by the Vichy regime and facilitated by the early creation of channels of economic cooperation between the two zones as well as to the clear priority given to economic issues by the German authorities in France.46 The French delegation to the Armistice Commission established a direct liaison with all Vichy ministries. The most significant of these ministries, for German economic aims, was the Ministry of Industrial Production. This bureau created, under its jurisdiction, the Office Centrale de Répartition des Produits Industriels, or OCRPI (Central Office for the Allocation of Industrial Products), which received orders from both Vichy and the economic branch of the German administration.47 Through these two offices, a channel of economic command from the occupied zone to the Vichy government was opened.48 Thus, the pretext of reparations, the system of clearing, and the open channel of economic command between the German military administration and Vichy made French resources fully available to Germany.

22  Chapter 2

German yearly requisitions of nonferrous metal—or Metalpläne— were instituted following an April 29, 1941, meeting between Dr. Michel and M. Barnaud (economic expert and deputy to the General Delegation of the French government in Paris) at the Hôtel Majestic in Paris. “Programme 1941,” the first of the Metalpläne, promised that vital French needs would be met and that any tonnage of metal recovered by the mobilization of nonferrous metals would be reserved for French needs. Furthermore, Germany would “restrict” its requisitions for 1941 to 30,000 metric tons of copper.49 A further meeting was scheduled for November to establish if France would be able to concede a further 16,000 tons to Germany in 1942.50 The November meeting, however, saw a German request for 33,800 tons of copper for 1942, of which 14,400 tons were to be in compensation for the preservation of French church bells.51 “Programme 1943” requested 24,000 tons, or 2,000 tons per month. In September 1943, this amount was raised to 34,000 tons. A further 24,000 tons were requested for 1944.52 In addition to these yearly copper requisitions were two copper recovery programs aimed at French industry. The Speer Programme, instituted on September 9, 1943, targeted replacing copper with other materials in electrical industries, yielding 24,000 tons of copper cable and 4,970 tons of scrap copper. Similarly, the Fellgiebel Programme, which began in August 1943, sought to replace copper cables in the telecommunications infrastructure with cables made of other materials. This yielded 822 tons of copper alloy. Such was the economic background and context of the bronze “mobilization” campaign—France and Germany’s copper requirements, the reasons for their shortage, German economic policy in France, and French complicity in the German exploitation of the French economy. There was a political element to this complicity as well, however. French participation in the Nazi New Order extended far beyond the economic realm. Vichy’s policy of collaboration was confirmed at a meeting between Hitler and Pétain at Montoire-sur-le-Loir, near Tours, in October 1940. In recounting the terms of the meeting in a speech on October 30, Pétain assured the French people that his primary goals in the talks had been a relaxation of the armistice terms and the release of prisoners of war. He also emphasized, however, that he saw Franco-German collaboration as providing an opportunity to fulfill the aims of the regime’s National Revolution—national renewal through a return to traditional values and organic communities. France’s self-indulgence during the discredited Third

The Context of Vichy’s Metal “Mobilization”  23

Republic had brought the country to ruin and only the spirit of sacrifice, which Pétain embodied, would bring this renewal. Thus, the Vichy government espoused a spirit of collaboration publicly endorsed by the head of state—a collaboration that would be inextricably tied to the National Revolution. In July 1940, Marshal Pétain, the hero of Verdun, had become the authoritarian “Head of the French State” following an extraordinary episode in which France’s elected representatives voluntarily relinquished their power, the parliament effectively voting itself out of existence and delivering a mortal blow to the beleaguered Third Republic. Pétain’s regime, housed in the provincial spa town of Vichy in the Auvergne, would attempt to raise a new, revitalized France—“True France” reborn through self-sacrifice and moral renewal—from the ashes of defeat. Many applauded the advent of the Pétain government and the return to order that his National Revolution promised. France, they lamented, had grown weak from the decadence and moral decline of the Third Republic. Their defeat was a warning and a salutary lesson. The conservative, nationalist agenda of the National Revolution promised to return France to its traditional roots, to embrace the peasants, the artisans, the village priests, and the mothers of large families, who had been so neglected by the Third Republic. France’s defeat gave the Vichy government and its supporters a pretext for change, reform, and even revenge against the groups perceived as the agents of national demise—Republicans, Communists, Freemasons, and Jews. But German occupation threatened French sovereignty. We know that Vichy operated with a great deal of latitude in French domestic affairs, and the government’s priority was to maintain this autonomy and prevent all appearance of subordination.53 Vichy sought to be—and to appear to be—a “junior partner” with Germany. France would concede much to maintain this illusion. In the interest of maintaining this image of sovereignty, the Vichy government—ever mindful of the resentment of the French population toward German demands for reparations—framed the deception that was at the core of the bronze mobilization campaign. Copper derived from melted bronze statuary was sent to German armaments factories, but ­Vichy adamantly and repeatedly claimed that the recovered metal was destined solely and uniquely for the revitalization of French industry and, primarily, agriculture. There were shortages of all kinds in wartime France

24  Chapter 2

and the lack of food and manufactured goods represented a major source of public discontent and, hence, a major preoccupation of the regime. The public was assured, therefore, that the collected metal would go to the creation of copper sulphate that would help French farmers revive French agriculture, and thus the French economy, and safeguard that national treasure, the vine. In a radio interview in early 1943, the Minister of National Education and Youth, Abel Bonnard, assured the public, The collected metal will be used uniquely in France and for France. I realize that there are rumors to the contrary [for this he blames enemy and resistance propaganda], but I stress that the metal collected in France is used exclusively in France. And I ask the French people to understand the tragic simplicity of the demands we face. Do we, or do we not, need copper sulphate so that our vines can produce a harvest? Will we, or will we not, spare the small amount of tin that is absolutely indispensable for welding and soldering?

Bonnard then appealed to his listeners’ patriotism, linking their sacrifice to France’s recovery: I don’t doubt this particular attachment [that people feel toward the sacrificed bronze statuary] born of affection as well as of habit, nor do I doubt that it is independent of the artistic value of the lost work . . . But feelings like this, in a time of such crisis, must be overcome. We must not only suffer, but understand all of the rigorous measures that are necessary today, because these measures are for France’s survival. Without them, there would be neither survival nor rebirth for France. The statues that are lost ensure our physical survival today. Those that will replace them will symbolize our glory for posterity.54

The Metal Recovery System and Its Structure Vichy’s first legislation to deal with the problem of shortages of nonferrous metals was a September 10, 1940, law requiring the declaration and registration of industrial stocks.55 The aim of this legislation was to assess the levels and distribution of supplies, including vital nonferrous metals, throughout the country. It granted Vichy rigorous central control over the utilization of all raw materials in the French economy and, in effect, moved the French economy much closer to a system of corporate organization.56 To administer this system, the Ministry of Industrial Production created the Central Office for the Allocation of Industrial Products, or OCRPI, located at 42, rue de la Boëtie in Paris.57 The OCRPI was responsible both

The Context of Vichy’s Metal “Mobilization”  25

to the Ministry of Industrial Production and the economic branch of the German military administration. It was charged with establishing a list of all consumers of nonferrous metals, cataloging the stocks available as of September 30, 1940, and distributing these stocks to vital industries. Within this framework, individual commodities were controlled by subsections (Comités de Répartition) of the OCRPI.58 The allocation of copper, then, became the task of the Répartiteur des métaux non-ferreux (Non-Ferrous Metal Distribution Office).59 The September 10, 1940, legislation, therefore, amounted to a general scheme of resource rationing and was applied to the whole of France. The extent of shortages and fears of hoarding had made it imperative that all stocks of metal be documented and made accessible to the state.60 An announcement in the Paris Bulletin Municipal Officiel (BMO) of January 21, 1941, advised that it had become necessary for the Répartiteur des métaux non-ferreux to take measures against dealers who did not comply with the September 10 law. This office would now require documentation of declaration of stocks from all merchants, and no one would be able to “participate in the distribution of metal” without such documentation.61 The registration of industrial stocks was quickly followed by measures to withdraw coinage, with the exception of 10-centime pieces, from circulation by February 1, 1941.62 From the summer of 1941, a salvage drive—similar to initiatives undertaken by the Allies—was instituted throughout France.63 The task of coordinating this drive fell jointly to the Commissariat for the Mobilization of Non-Ferrous Metals and to the Groupement pour l’Importation et Répartition des Métaux (Group for the Import and Distribution of Metals), or GIRM.64 The GIRM had been established in September 1939 and charged with ensuring the supply of nonferrous metal to French industry “in periods of war or shortage.”65 The spring 1940 debacle and German looting following the armistice consumed the GIRM’s reserves, but the organization had remained intact. From August 1941, with the launch of the first salvage drive, the GIRM entered into a close collaboration with the Commissariat for the Mobilization of Non-Ferrous Metals—the office created by the Ministry of Industrial Production to oversee this process.66 The commissioner, M. Regnier, coordinated, from his headquarters at 5, place Vendôme, a network of regional delegations led by ministry inspectors, as well as collection and demolition centers.67 In the metal recovery process, the GIRM played a technical and commercial role, with

26  Chapter 2

the commissariat assuming administrative control. Through government subsidies, the GIRM purchased the mobilized metals and then resold them to French and German industry. It also organized the transportation of metal from municipal and regional collection centers to depots and then to triage and processing facilities.68 From August 6, 1941, on, the French population was asked to bring metal items to their local city hall or prefecture, or in Paris (after August 18) to the mairie of their arrondissement.69 Nonessential household objects made from lead, copper, tin, nickel, zinc, or their alloys were to be brought to collection centers on specified days. The objects were weighed, receipts were written out according to the value and quantity of metal (copper was valued at 30 francs per kilogram), and these receipts could then be redeemed for cash within the space of a month. Low yields prompted the commis­sar­ iat to extend the Paris campaign to October 4, 1941, then to October 18, and finally to prolong it indefinitely, with frequent calls for metal appearing in the BMO throughout the winter.70 One such appeal appeared in the BMO on October 11, 1941—the same day that the bronze mobilization legislation would bring French statuary into this metal recovery process: Shortages of non-ferrous metals . . . worsen each day and the situation requires that measures be taken to procure for our industry these indispensable metals. At the request of the Secretary of State for Industrial Production, I will once again call on the . . . national solidarity of the Parisian population, and urge them to voluntarily deposit . . . non-ferrous metals that are still in their possession. The recovery of these

Table 1 

GIRM Nonferrous Metal Mobilization Campaigns



Metal Collected (kilograms)

Campaign

Cost (francs)

Copper

Hotels Stills Viticulture Copper-Wine Religious Edifices Industry and Commerce Statues Total

142,341,564 6,313,482 19,897,720 90,470,797 238,307 6,690,351 3,034,900 268,987,121

1,661,024 6,189,046 19,897,720 90,470,797 231,901 6,687,592 3,034,900 128,172,980

source: Data from CHAN, 68 AJ

Tin 132,287,974 17,604

132,305,578

Figure 2 

GIRM Regional Delegations

Figure 3 

Demolition Centers and Tributary Zones

27

28  Chapter 2

metals, which are destined solely and strictly for French Industry [italics in the original], serves not only the maintenance of industrial and agricultural activity but, furthermore, of provisions. It will allow the protection of harvests and the development of electrical energy in compensation for the lack of combustible materials. It will, furthermore, facilitate the manufacture of synthetic products: textiles, fuels, fertiliser etc. I trust that the population will understand that it is its duty to contribute to the rectification of a particularly serious situation and that it will relieve the Government of the obligation of taking [harsher] measures . . . such as requisitions.71

The salvage campaign was also extended throughout the rest of France. The low yields of the initial campaign were blamed primarily on the hasty planning and poor timing of the operation. The engineer in chief for the district of Clermont-Ferrand complained that local officials did not have sufficient time to prepare for the campaign, to make ready collection centers and transportation, and to advertise the program. Furthermore, the timing of the campaign coincided with the harvest, which meant that the rural population was too busy to assemble metal items and transport them to collection centers.72 According to the engineer in chief, Pelletier, there was another reason that the yields were so low: “The idea is universally accepted that the metal is for the Germans. It is reinforced by the current collection of rags, which are to be sent to Germany.”73 In addition, Pelletier emphasized, the price for the metal was too low for farmers, who were relatively affluent. Also, collecting and turning in metal items was very inconvenient for many people, and the period designated for the collection was too short.74 To accompany the extended salvage campaign throughout France, the administration at various levels undertook a variety of propaganda initiatives. Pelletier contacted representatives of the Catholic Church in Clermont-Ferrand to request that priests mention the campaign in their weekly sermons. Commenting on the success of this initiative to the prefect of Puy-de-Dôme, Pelletier suggested that mayors throughout the department request the same of their parish priests.75 Some municipalities in the Auvergne used trucks with loud speakers to advertise the campaign in their communities.76 Postcards with a message from the Minister of Industrial Production, François Lehideux, were also printed up for national circulation: Français, many of you have not yet understood the importance of the recovery of non-ferrous metal for our economy as a whole. This lack of understanding could have

The Context of Vichy’s Metal “Mobilization”  29

dramatic consequences, to which many French families may fall victim. Winter is near, and it will be a difficult one. Unemployment, cold, and hunger threaten. But we need non-ferrous metal for the food industry, to ensure the distribution of water and gas, for electricity. We need non-ferrous metals in order to maintain our industrial activity, and also to protect our crops from disease. Pay no heed to the insidious propaganda that attempts to make you believe that our country will not benefit from these measures taken by the French government. The occupation authorities have agreed to make no claim on the non-ferrous metal raised [by this campaign]. I am authorized by our leader, Marshal Pétain, to assure you that the benefit of this campaign is and will be for France alone. Furthermore, I remind you that the receipts given in exchange for metal, for which everyone will be reimbursed, will give wine growers access to copper sulphate. In fact, you are not really asked to make any sacrifice—you have old, useless objects, you sell them to French industry, and what you reap is in the form of work, housing, heating, and lighting. Your understanding and your good faith will permit a rapid solution to this problem, a problem that is currently one of our most serious. Time is running out . . . The well-being of the nation is at stake.77

When the yields of the voluntary salvage campaign proved to be insufficient, a metal recovery campaign that targeted the wine industry was instituted in the autumn of 1941. The initial plan was for wine growers to exchange copper directly for copper sulphate (kilogram for kilogram). Commissioner Regnier rejected this direct exchange, however, and—in cooperation with the Corporation Paysanne—collected copper against promises of fertilizer that, more often than not, never materialized. In the summer of 1942, recovery measures were expanded to include commercial and industrial property. This new campaign began with hotels in the early spring, and was expanded to cover all other sectors by a governmental decree of August 28, 1942.78 As a result of this decree, hotels and cafés were divested of their copper countertops; distilleries and breweries lost their stills and kettles; and businesses were searched for door knobs, plaques, napkin rings, or light fixtures that might yield some precious copper.79 As for the general population, Vichy quickly made recourse to more persuasive measures to get people to relinquish their metal objects. In the fall of 1942, the government instituted another “copper drive” but this time, rather than cash, the public was offered wine in return.80 For every 200 grams of copper, the donor received a liter of wine. In addition to making the incentive more attractive, this drive was also accompanied by

30  Chapter 2 Table 2   Nonferrous Metal Mobilization Campaigns, August 1942–December 1944

Campaign Voluntary Donations Copper for Copper Sulphate Copper Stills Brasseries and Malteries Printing Press Music Stands Hotels Countertops First Campaign Countertops Second Campaign Commerce and Industry Religious Edifices Copper-Wine Auctions and Forced Sales Statues* Collections War Damage (Zones Sinistrées) Cylinders Impôt Métal Total

Total (kilograms) 56,026.09 450,595.80 8,141.80 8,455.00 2,846,470.00 327,933.00 379,558.00 98,869.83 768,152.90 578,226.22 420,728.69 32,233.74 671,149.96 64,429.56 521,900.00 38,630.00 229,654.20 1,746.90 336,264.34 7,839,166.03

*GIRM to ROGES (August to December 1942: 527,651 kgs) source: Data from CHAN, 68 AJ 157

an extensive propaganda campaign designed to reach a greater portion of the population and to dispel rumors and speculation about the destination of the metal. The French public assumed, correctly, that the collected ­metal was destined for German munitions. Vichy officials hoped, however, to use the copper-wine exchange to promote the idea that the yield would be used to produce fungicide for French viticulture: People have never been more selfish than they are today, and never as suspicious. The [metal] recovery propaganda, up to now, has basically . . . conferred an exaggerated value on the object to be recovered and . . . provoked doubt about its actual destination. Propaganda and the recovery process form, in our view, an inseparable whole. A poster about the need to fight mildew amounts merely to one more poster

The Context of Vichy’s Metal “Mobilization”  31

on the walls. What we need is to collect copper . . . This plan certainly involves some challenges in application, but our error up to now has been to imagine that we could solve these problems without effort. One and a half million wine growers consume 1/6 of the total production of wine. The average consumer drinks just enough so as not to forget the taste. The producer must therefore make a personal effort to help with the recovery of copper, and the consumer must find a real and immediate interest in relinquishing his old metal. In exchange for copper we must offer wine, wine which we must obtain from the producers themselves, from their own stocks. And if we exchange wine for copper, we link the two. The public will no longer doubt that we are seeking copper for the wine growers, where their current tendency is to think that we seek it for war production.81

Table 3  Nonferrous Metal Mobilization Campaigns, Paris, August 1942–July 1944

Campaign

Total (kilograms)

Voluntary Donations Copper for Copper Sulphate Copper Stills Brasseries and Malteries Printing Presses Music Stands First Campaign Music Stands Second Campaign Hotels Countertops First Campaign Countertops Second Campaign Commerce and Industry Religious Edifices Copper-Wine Auctions and Forced Sales Statues Collections War Damage Cylinders Impôt Métal Total

55,581.00 45,596.00 8,142.00 8,455.00 2,832,568.00 327,933.00 258,464.00 121,094.00 70,877.00 768,153.00 571,348.00 413,028.00 32,234.00 671,150.00 58,476.00 522.00 37,613.00 125,158.00 1,747.00 124,427.00 6,532,566.00

source: Data from CHAN, 68 AJ 157

32  Chapter 2

The copper-wine exchange began in the department of the Seine on September 4, 1942, and was scheduled to run only two weeks. A maximum of ten kilograms per person could be donated to the collection centers, and only household items were accepted. Industrial scraps and semi-finished products were excluded because of fear that this would encourage theft. As in the earlier salvage drive, the metal was weighed at collection centers, and coupons were issued that donors could then redeem at their local wine merchants. Between September 4 and 19, 485 metric tons of metal were collected in Paris, and 24,000 hectoliters of wine were distributed. Following this initial success, the copper-wine campaign was soon extended to all departments for the last two weeks of December 1942. Collection centers were opened in prefectures and sub-prefectures, as well as in larger communes. The wine coupons could subsequently be redeemed at any wine merchant in France until January 10, 1943.82 Although in mid-September 1942, it was projected that wine stocks would be sufficient to permit a larger wine ration that winter,83 shortages of wine hindered the campaign from its inception. A curt memo from the prefecture in Marseilles informed the commissariat that there was not enough wine in the region to honor the coupons already in circulation.84 The commissioner himself lamented at the end of October that there would only be 100,000 hectoliters available for the campaign. In a December 15, 1942 letter, Jean Bichelonne, Minister of Industrial Production, conceded, It is possible that difficulties encountered supplying the retailers will affect our results. In the light of events in North Africa, which deprive them of Algerian wine, the Food Supply Services [Services de Ravitaillement] were forced to suspend their shipments and profoundly revise their supply programme. In many departments, we will have to consider depleting reserve stocks in order to honour the coupons. Furthermore, some prefects are so alarmed by the wine supply situation as to plan, in Orléans for example, to use their regulatory powers to delay or prevent [metal] collection in their department.85

In addition to these shortages, popular response fell far short of expectations, largely for the reasons outlined in the campaign proposal cited earlier. Copper was now a valuable commodity, and people preferred to hang on to it, especially when they suspected that it would be used not for French agriculture, but for German munitions. A number of radio ads aimed to reinforce the link between copper and wine in the popular

The Context of Vichy’s Metal “Mobilization”  33

mind and to dispel widespread suspicions that the metal was destined for armaments: a

b a b a b

a

Never has our old French song “c’est à boire, à boire, à boire, à boire, c’est à boire qu’ il nous faut” been more fitting. Christmas and New Year’s Eve are around the corner and wine rations are still so sparse. Don’t you have some copper, bronze, brass, or maillechort 86 lying around? Sure, maybe . . . am I missing something? Haven’t you seen those big posters, haven’t you heard the appeals on the radio? Sure, but is all that on the level? Do you really know what they are going to use that copper for? Certainly you realise that the vine is one of the greatest riches of our French patrimony, but that there is a desperate need of sulphate. Without sulphate there will be no wine in 1943. In responding to the appeal of the Commissariat for the Mobilization of Non-Ferrous Metals we are working together for the good of the people and the nation. In that case, I won’t hesitate.

The copper-wine campaign also, surprisingly, met resistance from another quarter—the German military administration. The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Armed Forces High Command) (OKW) briefly prohibited the drive in the two departments that fell under its administration— Nord and Pas-de-Calais. Again fears of theft, as well as fears of public drunkenness, were the motivating factors. The prohibition was lifted on December 9, however, and the campaign proceeded as planned between December 15 and 31.87 On the heels of the copper-wine campaign came the harsher measures that the government had threatened the year before—requisitions. In a letter to prefects on January 16, 1943, Regnier thanked them for their cooperation in the copper-wine campaign and outlined the new measures for metal recovery: The national copper-wine exchange met with great success. . . . The way that the population of [your department] responded to our appeal reinforces the extent to which your collaboration is valuable in accomplishing the mission with which I have been entrusted by the Government. In thanking you for the support you have granted me on this occasion, I trust that I will be able to further rely on it for the mobilization measures that will soon be underway.88

Table 4 

34

Copper-Wine Campaign Summary

Regional Depot Lille Nord Pas-de-Calais Total Donors Total Wine

53,466.30 kilograms donated 40,983.19 kilograms 21,617.00 470,020.00 liters distributed

Regional Depot Laon Aisne Ardennes Oise Somme Total Donors Total Wine

13,805.46 kilograms donated 17,555.45 kilograms 14,373.61 kilograms 39,036.36 kilograms 20,363.00 421,714.00 liters distributed

Regional Depot Nancy Meurthe-et-Moselle Meuse Vosges Total Donors Total Wine

65,221.18 kilograms donated 17,352.15 kilograms 18,169.32 kilograms 32,885.00 501,792.00 liters distributed

Regional Depot Châlons Aube Marne Haute-Marne Total Donors Total Wine

19,800.16 kilograms donated 55,200.40 kilograms 13,425.08 kilograms 27,718.00 439,790.00 liters distributed

Regional Depot Paris Seine Seine-et-Marne Seine-et-Oise

478,346.00 kilograms donated 26,050.93 kilograms 136,889.08 kilograms

Regional Depot Rouen Calvados Eure Manche Orne Seine-Inférieure Total Donors Total Wine

6,844.02 kilograms donated 10,746.61 kilograms 2,862.72 kilograms 1,958.83 kilograms 72,049.04 kilograms 37,188.00 468,940.00 liters distributed

Table 4 

(continued )

Regional Depot Rennes Côtes-du-Nord Finistère Ille-et-Vilaine Morbihan Total Donors Total Wine

4,539.62 kilograms donated 11,707.06 kilograms 11,637.88 kilograms 13,977.86 kilograms 16,459.00 237,946.00 liters distributed

Regional Depot Angers Indre-et-Loire Loire-Inférieure Maine-et-Loire Mayenne Sarthe Total Donors Total Wine

5,430.49 kilograms donated 6,720.52 kilograms 4,076.65 kilograms 558,440.00 kilograms 3,214.38 kilograms 8,010.00 99,552.00 liters distributed

Regional Depot Orléans Cher Eure-et-Loire Loir-et-Cher Loiret Total Donors Total Wine

6,355.73 kilograms donated 4,049.74 kilograms 1,181.38 kilograms 6,794.59 kilograms 6,037.00 91,350.00 liters distributed

Regional Depot Dijon Allier Côtes-d’Or Doubs Jura Nièvre Haute-Saone Saone-et-Loire Yonne Territoire de Belfort Total Donors Total Wine

4,025.07 kilograms donated 15,120.40 kilograms 22,705.65 kilograms 2,300.61 kilograms 5,747.79 kilograms 6,326.45 kilograms 8,803.42 kilograms 6,326.45 kilograms 5,788.12 kilograms 23,205.00 377,689.00 liters distributed (continued )

35

Table 4 

(continued )

Regional Depot Lyon Ain Ardèche Drôme Isère Jura Loire Rhône Saone-et-Loire Savoie Haute-Savoie Total Donors Total Wine

13,394.37 kilograms donated 1,910.54 kilograms 11,800.02 kilograms 37,263.93 kilograms 4,698.66 kilograms 126,362.93 kilograms 235,187.99 kilograms 5,189.06 kilograms 7,673.19 kilograms 4,235.71 kilograms 144,749.00 2,222,954.00 liters distributed

Regional Depot Clermont-Ferrand Allier 22,130.28 kilograms donated Cantal 9,623.35 kilograms Haute-Loire 5,775.21 kilograms Puy-de-Dôme 21,649.88 kilograms Total Donors 18,228.00 Total Wine 294,255.00 liters distributed

36

Regional Depot Limoges Charente Cher Corrèze Creuse Dordogne Indre Indre-et-Loire Vienne Haute-Vienne Total Donors Total Wine

338.35 kilograms donated 2,670.25 kilograms 3,525.29 kilograms 10,579.93 kilograms 5,166.58 kilograms 7,091.12 kilograms 203.58 kilograms 283.30 kilograms 26,971.88 kilograms 15,577.00 281,844.00 liters distributed

Regional Depot Poitiers Charente Charente-Maritime Deux-Sèvres Vendée Vienne Total Donors Total Wine

2,861.42 kilograms donated 7,961.23 kilograms 1,436.93 kilograms 1,317.87 kilograms 1,956.66 kilograms 5,663.00 73,093.00 liters distributed

Table 4 

(continued )

Regional Depot Bordeaux Gironde Landes Basses-Pyrénées Total Donors Total Wine

23,080.29 kilograms donated 685,455.00 kilograms 10,751.83 kilograms 12,170.00 171,071.00 liters distributed

Regional Depot Toulouse Ariège Haute-Garonne Gers Gironde Lot Lot-et-Garonne Basses-Pyrénées Hautes-Pyrénées Tarn Tarn-et-Garonne Total Donors Total Wine

2,679.77 kilograms donated 26,973.99 kilograms 540.40 kilograms 105.10 kilograms 2,022.03 kilograms 3,570.52 kilograms 11,236.55 kilograms 9,481.90 kilograms 6,281.43 kilograms 2,747.32 kilograms 17,005.00 281,844.00 liters distributed

Regional Depot Montpellier Aude 1,972.12 kilograms donated Aveyron 7,054.37 kilograms Hérault 14,847.37 kilograms Lozère 2,451.53 kilograms Pyrénées Orientales 2,532.84 kilograms Total Donors 9,315.00 Total Wine 143,044.00 liters distributed Regional Depot Marseille Basses-Alpes 2,520.13 kilograms donated Hautes-Alpes 4,884.13 kilograms Alpes-Maritimes 200,729.10 kilograms Bouches-du-Rhône 310,620.30 kilograms Gard 12,297.93 kilograms Var 64,460.65 kilograms Vaucluse 18,483.50 kilograms Total Donors 175,542.00 Total Wine 2,997,187.00 liters distributed Total copper donations

3,826,445.36 kilograms

note: The total weight of copper donations appears as 2,589,901.351 in the documents, though this does not correspond with the sum of the departmental figures. source: Data from CHAN, 68 AJ 312

37

38  Chapter 2

These measures—requisitions—took much the same form as the earlier drives. A law of February 9, 1943, instituted the impôt métal—a “tax” to be paid in nonferrous metal. As with the earlier voluntary drive, items were to be brought to collection centers and donors were compensated at the same rate (30 francs per kilogram), but this time “donations” of 10 kilograms per person were mandatory. Those who did not contribute faced a fine. As with the copper-wine campaign, the impôt métal was accompanied by extensive propaganda. A preliminary report was blunt about the probable public perception of the tax: “There is no doubt that the . . . new tax—given the circumstances and current trends of public opinion—can only augment the reluctance of the [population].” Again, sacrifice for the greater good of France was invoked: It is not with demands or threats that we will obtain the sympathy of the French people. The French are certainly patriotic but they remain, despite the events and lessons of the last few years, very individualistic. It is important, above all, to emphasize the essential but generally neglected fact that France, one of the weakest producers of copper in the world, is the fourth [sic] greatest consumer of copper in the world.89

The importance of copper for French viticulture, agriculture, and industry was again driven home to the French population, and was met, for the most part, with reticence.90 The sub-prefect for Saint-Malo reported in July 1944: “The public reaction to the impôt métal has generally been one of flat refusal. In the Saint-Malo region, only 2.27 percent of the population have participated.”91 The prefect-delegate of Côte-d’Or wrote to the Feldkommandant in Dijon on May 12, 1944: “The impôt métal has since April been the primary preoccupation of the public; it has provoked violent criticism, and widespread discontent.”92 The prefect of Tarn reported a year earlier, in May 1943, that advertisements concerning the impôt métal had provoked an extremely negative reaction. The tax was considered to be an extreme and poorly conceived measure, and the cash equivalence to be paid by those unable to pay in nonferrous metal was regarded as excessive and unrealistic.93 In a report on public opinion for January 1943, the Chef du Service Régional des Renseignements Généraux informed Vichy that the announcement of the impôt métal was, at first, treated lightly. But appeals circulating on English radio to resist the metal drive were, in this official’s mind, likely to be heeded by the French population. “People will pay [the fine] before they relinquish their household objects, even if they are of little use.”94 Despite repeated denials by the regime, the widespread suspicion

The Context of Vichy’s Metal “Mobilization”  39

that resources raised by all the metal recovery initiatives would benefit the Wehrmacht rather than French industry stubbornly persisted. A Ministry of the Interior synthesis of prefectoral reports for October and November 1941 observed: The launch of the non-ferrous metal recovery campaign has faced two obstacles: one stems from rumours that allude to the delivery of these metals to the German war industry, the other from a lack of initiative on the part of mayors who are overworked.95

The prefect of Tarn-et-Garonne discussed the problems of the public perception of the impôt métal at length in a report of June 1944: The impôt métal remains the principal argument used against the government by its adversaries . . . Obviously nobody has any illusions about the real purpose of this taxation, and no one believes that it is destined to feed the French economy. In any case it is excessive . . . As it is, the impôt métal is unpopular in the countryside, and it seems that it will be impossible to implement it fully.96

The lack of popular participation in the impôt métal was, therefore, partly the result of obstinacy, a refusal by the French public to relinquish their suddenly very valuable metal goods, but also of a growing conviction— despite the regime’s emphatic declarations to the contrary—that the metal was destined for Germany. Furthermore, a significant portion of the population was unable to pay the impôt for various reasons. A Ministry of the Interior synopsis of prefectoral reports for the month of March 1943 noted concern expressed by a number of prefects over the inability of sinistrés—refugees and people who had lost their homes and businesses to Allied or German bombs—to pay the tax. There was also concern that young couples who had married since 1940 would have little in their new homes to contribute. The impôt métal legislation instructed people who could not raise the required amount of metal to pay a fine, but this was considered by a number of prefects to be a “heavy and inopportune penalty to impose on young couples.”97 Worse still, many people had no metallic objects with which to pay the impôt because German troops had already “requisitioned” them. A June 1943 report of the Gendarmerie Nationale for Brittany noted, A considerable traffic of non-ferrous metal is occurring under the protection, and sometimes under the direction of the occupying army. The “collection” takes place wherever troops are stationed. Once they have left, no metal objects remain. Everyday items are not even spared.98

40  Chapter 2

The prefect of Haute-Saône was informed by one of the mayors of his department that, as early as July 1940, German troops stationed in his commune searched every house for copper objects. The hamlet was subsequently completely stripped of any objects with which to pay the impôt, and the mayor sought exemption for his townspeople from having to pay the fine.99 Thus, the Vichy government launched a number of campaigns in an attempt to rectify national shortages of nonferrous metal, and particularly copper. The mobilization of bronze statuary must be seen in the context of these other metal recovery campaigns. As far as the Ministry of Industrial Production was concerned, the destruction of statuary constituted but one of a number of drives to recover metal and meet the demands of the French economy and France’s armistice obligations to Germany. Like brass rails, copper countertops, and stills, bronze statuary presented the Vichy government with a relatively easily exploitable source of nonferrous metal. Because bronze statues were one source of metal among many, we must also, therefore, consider the alternatives to the destruction of statuary that Vichy chose not to pursue. France was not the only country in occupied Europe that was confronted with a paucity of nonferrous metal and that faced demands from Germany for industrial resources. Most of occupied Europe, as well as Austria and Germany itself, was forced to seek out all available sources of metal for agriculture, industry, and armaments. Vichy is unique, however, in its choice of statuary as a source for this metal. In every other country from which metal was confiscated, the demand was met by smelting down church bells.100 Vichy alone chose to sacrifice public monuments rather than remove the church bells that were confiscated throughout the rest of occupied Europe. Under the German occupation of Europe, more than 170,000 bells, weighing approximately 54,000,000 kilograms, were removed from churches across the continent. Of these, more than 148,000 (more than 40,000,000 kilograms) were destroyed.101 In Belgium, 5,020 bells (or 3,390,000 kilograms) were removed, of which 4,220 (or 2,790,000 kilo­grams) were smelted. Similarly, in the Netherlands 6,500 bells (about 2,600,000 kilograms) were removed and 4,660 (or 1,918,000 kilograms) were irreparably damaged or destroyed. Germany itself lost almost 83 percent of its bells. In France, however, of the 75,000 bells that existed before the war, only 1,160 were destroyed. These bells were removed from Alsace and Lorraine, which, annexed to the Reich, faced the same system of bell confiscation that applied in Germany. Removals began in Alsace and Lorraine in 1942 but, interestingly, were not as extensive as in other Reich

The Context of Vichy’s Metal “Mobilization”  41

territories. In Lorraine, 932 bells (658,000 kilograms) were removed, of which 811 (588,000 kilograms) were destroyed. The church bells of the rest of France, however, were preserved.102 Vichy’s National Revolution was based on close state ties with the French Catholic Church. Although Pétain himself was agnostic, he saw the Catholic Church as a tool with which to entrench his propaganda and confirm his power, as a catalyst for the mobilization of the masses, and as a force for the preservation of the established order. Vichy propaganda, with its discourses of sacrifice and rebirth, was infused with Catholic imagery, even including representations likening Pétain to Christ.103 Following the Armistice, Pétain offered the nation the gift of his person as a sacrifice in France’s hour of need (and encouraged the French people to follow his lead, sacrificing their material comfort, and sometimes themselves or their family members—as in the mandatory labor service—for the good of France). The Lord’s Prayer was replaced by an oath to the Maréchal, and images of Christ on the cross were reintroduced in public buildings, reversing the law of 1905.104 Furthermore, despite his personal beliefs, Pétain was involved in church ceremonies and was in close contact with the Catholic hierarchy. He saw the historical link between the French state and the French church as lending his regime legitimacy. As Robert Paxton describes, philosophers of the French right, such as Charles Maurras, had accustomed French conservatives to valuing the church as an instrument of social conservatism whether they were believers or not.105 The Vichy regime cultivated churchmen, sought their advice, and made the church’s teachings about the family, moral decadence, and spiritual values its own.106 Vichy’s ties with Catholicism ran much deeper than imagery and propaganda, however. The Vichy regime supported the moral force that Catholicism represented, and the Church and Vichy shared many of the same goals for France’s rebirth and renewal. Vichy’s National Revolution embodied some long-held aspirations of the French religious right, including the return of “True France.” True France was pious and agrarian, and embraced its traditional (read, pre-industrial) culture and heritage. The three pillars of this “revolution”—Travail, Famille, Patrie—rested on the solid foundation of the organic community—the family, the guild, the village, the parish, the region. The health of these organic communities was tied to Christian moral values, and extended to the love of the soil, the nation, and traditional culture. An integral Catholic vision of the moral order, therefore, encouraged France to return to the traditional faith of its years of glory, with its acceptance of authority and social hierarchy.

42  Chapter 2

In Vichy, the French Catholic Church found the state sanction and support it had sorely missed under the Third Republic, and even since the French Revolution. Paxton explains, “As the old godless Third Republic lost its legitimacy, few groups found revenge sweeter than the French clergy and the faithful, nursing long grudges against the results of the French Revolution and against sixty years of official republican anticlericalism.”107 The Catholic Church and the Vichy government cooperated on a program to construct churches in the working class neighborhoods of the Paris banlieue (suburbs) in an effort to re-Christianize the notorious “redbelt” (socialist enclaves).108 Many French Catholics and conservatives alike yearned for the return of a France that looked inward toward the parish church with its cherished bell. As Alain Corbin describes, France had, since the Renaissance, been known as the country of “ringing towns.”109 For centuries, church bells had tolled the Angelus and vespers that ordered rural lives and marked events in the spiritual and social calendars of the population. The sound of the bells was a deeply embedded element in the auditory landscape of France. Bells transmitted information about the major events of private life, and solemnized rites of passage. The village bell was an alarm and a voice of authority. It im­parted a rhythm to the ordinary functioning of the community but, above all, bells were symbols of the prestige, reputation, and honor of a community.110 Communities of any significance could not conceive of being without a ring of bells.111 Thus, for both political and symbolic reasons, French church bells were not recovered for reparations after 1940.112 A March 1941 memo from Jean Bichelonne—who would later oversee the destruction of bronze statuary as Minister of Industrial Production from March 1942 to August 1944—raised the question of German requests for the mobilization of church bells throughout the country. These bells would undoubtedly yield a significant amount of nonferrous metal for Germany, he conceded, but this action would constitute a desecration of French patrimony and, without question, violated the conditions of the armistice.113 The issue of church bells was raised again on April 29, 1941, at the meeting that instituted the 1941 Metalplan, but, after more negotiation, a decision was once again postponed. German authorities likely consented to spare French bells in exchange for a certain tonnage of copper (14,400 metric tons for 1942 is the figure given by the Commission Consultative des Dommages) some time in the spring or early summer of 1941. In July 1941, Vichy’s Council of Ministers led by Darlan proposed that bronze derived from statues be substituted for the

The Context of Vichy’s Metal “Mobilization”  43

bronze that Germany sought to obtain from church bells. The minutes of the meetings of the Council of Ministers unfortunately no longer exist. We are, therefore, forced to rely on Yvon Bizardel’s rather sensational description of the Council of Ministers’ deliberation on this question. Bizardel, curator of the Musée Galliéra, described the meeting in his 1964 memoirs: There was quite a ruckus in the Council of Ministers. [Jacques] Barnaud presented, without the slightest conviction, by the way, the German demand. All the ministers, except Benoist-Méchin, who kept silent, rejected it.114 . . . The ministers were outraged. “Our statues, all our statues,” cried Caziot and Berthelot, “but not one bell.”115

The Vichy decision to exchange statues for bells is corroborated by a letter of August 8, 1942, from the Commissariat for the Mobilization of NonFerrous Metal, to members of the clergy: The German authorities have declared their intention to meet their requirements of copper and tin by seizing church bells in the occupied territories. After considerable effort, the [French] government has persuaded them to relent, but only in exchange for the promise to provide an equivalent weight of metal to what they intended to requisition. The shipments that enabled the bells to be saved were levied from stocks reserved for national agriculture and industry. They have created a shortage of metal, which threatens to irremediably compromise the nation’s economy. The Government has already taken steps to obtain the necessary metal including the smelting of statues erected in the public domain.

When Vichy embarked on its program of recovering bronze from monuments and statuary, it faced a strong public reaction. The destruction of statuary unleashed vehement protest from a population that was incensed at the prospect of losing cherished symbols of national and civic pride. Had Vichy chosen to melt church bells, however, there is no reason to believe that the public reaction would have been any different.116 It is impossible to place a relative value on a statue or a bell. The destruction of either is offensive and bound to provoke controversy. There are, however, some important distinctions to be drawn between church bells and public statues, particularly regarding their replacement. The departmental archives of Ille-et-Vilaine and Haute-Garonne reveal that a large number of protected historical monuments in these regions are church bells. Most date from the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, but some are even older.117 The bell in the parish church of La Selle-en-Coglès (Ille-et-Vilaine) dates from 1439, one in Cintegabelle (Haute-Garonne) from 1432, and a bell in Fougères (Ille-et-Vilaine) from

44  Chapter 2

1387.118 In Côte-d’Or, a 1943 inventory led to the classification of 85 bells cast before 1800, bringing to 139 the number of bells in the department protected as historical monuments.119 The vast majority of statuary that was removed during the mobilization campaign had been erected after the mid-nineteenth century, and very few of these works were classified as protected historical monuments.120 The qualities that are valued in a bell—its pitch, tone, and other musical attributes—are impossible to replicate. Bronze sculpture, on the other hand, depends on a method of production that allows identical copies to be produced, providing that casts of the work are preserved. As Walter Benjamin discusses in Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, the notion of authenticity—a measure of the “value” of a work of art—is no longer relevant faced with media such as photography or bronze casting that are inherently multiple: “From a photographic negative, for example,” Benjamin argued, “one can make any number of prints; to ask for the ‘authentic’ print makes no sense.”121 Similarly, as Rosalind Krauss points out in The Originality of the AvantGarde, for an artist such as Auguste Rodin, the concept of the “authentic bronze cast” seems also to make little sense.122 In the case of Rodin’s Gates of Hell, for example, multiple copies exist in the absence of an original, the most recent one cast in 1978, sixty years after the death of the artist. This 1978 version was included with much fanfare in an exhibition in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., with few people, Krauss’ insightful essay excluded, pausing to consider the paradox that a work is still considered a Rodin despite the fact that the artist had no part in its creation and was long dead. Ultimately, therefore, it is perhaps relevant to consider that a bronze statue can be recast.123 A fourteenth-century bell, on the other hand, once damaged or destroyed, is lost forever. There is no doubt that the Vichy government, when faced with the choice of melting church bells or melting public statues, was confronted with a “no-win” situation. Irreparable damage to French patrimony was the inevitable result either way. It is futile, and largely beside the point, to speculate which choice—statues or bells—would have been more damaging or more unpopular. What is clear, however, and what will be demonstrated in the following chapters, is that the French administrations in charge of the bronze statue mobilization campaign did much to exacer­bate this already difficult situation and, most significantly, the ­Vichy government seriously underestimated the nature and extent of public reaction to the statue campaign.124

Pl ate 1 

Mobilization of nonferrous metal in Puy-de-Dôme

Photo: Léon Gendre

Pl ate 2 

Scrap metal collection in Puy-de-Dôme

Photo: Léon Gendre 45

Pl ate 3 

Transporting scrap metal in Puy-de-Dôme

Photo: Léon Gendre

Pl ate 4 

Church bells in scrap yard, Hamburg

Photo: Public Record Office, London 46

3 “The Union of Art and Industry” Vichy’s Bronze Mobilization Campaign

The removal of statues and monuments in copper alloy located in the public domain or in administrative offices shall proceed with the aim of returning their constituent metals to the cycle of industrial or agricultural production.1 We have been told that the removal of these statues meets a double goal: to recover bronze, which has apparently become a precious metal, and to rid the capital of the monstrosities that insult her charm. This little revolution rests on an allegory coddled by the [Republic], the union of art and industry. Industry is perhaps satisfied, but art has been duped!2

Vichy’s “union of art and industry” in the mobilization of bronze statuary was motivated by the economic value of copper, but complicated considerably by the cultural and symbolic value of public art. The context of Vichy’s mobilization of nonferrous metal underscores the pragmatic, economic motivations behind these measures, and it is essential to consider the mobilization of bronze statuary in the context of this larger system of metal recovery. The smelting of French statues differed from other metal salvage campaigns, however, in two important respects, which both arise from the statues’ significance as patrimony: the metal that the statues yielded was treated separately from the yields of other salvage campaigns, and the mobilization process itself became far more complex and considerably more controversial. The distinctive features of Vichy’s campaign for the mobilization of statuary, which distinguish it from the other wartime salvage measures, will be outlined in three sections dedicated to the direct connection between statue metal and German armaments, the complex and controversial 47

48  Chapter 3

bronze administration, and the involvement of Vichy and German administrations in the two waves of removals of statuary.

Monuments to Munitions Vichy’s “mobilization” of statuary is noteworthy because, unlike the government’s other salvage drives, the metal yielded through the statue campaign was earmarked specifically for German armaments. The yields of the other nonferrous metal drives (the copper-wine exchange, the recovery of countertops and stills, the impôt métal and so forth) were sold to French firms, but the bronze derived from statues was shipped directly to Germany and its value subtracted, through the process of clearing, from the cost of the occupation. A substantial amount of the yield of the other metal drives was also eventually destined for Germany, but this was generally in the form of finished goods manufactured in France. The value of these goods would also be deducted by clearing from the sum of reparations but, nevertheless, it is important to note that the metal derived from public statuary was treated separately. The files of the Commissariat for the Mobilization of Non-Ferrous Metal contain the shipment receipts of the Group for the Import and Distribution of Metals (GIRM) for 1942.3 These receipts reveal that all metal derived from public statuary was sold to a German company called ­ROGES—the Rohstoffhandelsgesellschaft or Raw Material Trading Company. ROGES was an agency owned in part by the German state and formed to procure strategic raw materials for the German armament industry. The British Foreign Office estimated after the war that at least 60 percent of the company’s stock was procured from the occupied territories.4 Between January and August 1942, 59 shipments of bronze derived from French public statuary—some 483,562 kilograms of metal— were transported by the French rail, Société Nationale des Chemins de fer (SNCF), to ROGES facilities in Germany. The shipments peaked, however, in October 1942. In one month, 61 shipments containing 494,106 kilograms of metal were transferred to Germany. This extreme increase in exports of metal from France to Germany in October 1942 is very revealing. Above all, it underlines the link between French resources and the German war effort. Germany, in the autumn of 1942, was on the verge of “total war.” Joseph Goebbels’ famous two-hour speech of

Vichy’s Bronze Mobilization Campaign  49

February 18, 1943, to a handpicked audience in the Berlin Sportpalast, asked the German population to commit to a policy of “total war.” By this, he meant them to consent to the mobilization of the home front for the war effort and the dedication of every sector of the economy to war production in a drastic attempt to reverse the worsening course of the war for Germany.5

Table 5 

Region

Copper and Bronze Stocks in ROGES Dumps, April 30, 1945* Metal

Weight (kgs)

Hanover scrap copper 270 crude copper 6,120 electrolytic copper 17,010 electrolytic copper 13,320 scrap copper 96,770 scrap copper 115,580 scrap copper 1,088,990 scrap copper 571,810 scrap copper 75,900 scrap copper 254,870 bronze 3,192 scrap copper 560,280 scrap copper 13,120 scrap copper 12,000 crude copper 19,770 crude copper 12,940 crude copper 5,000 bronze 10,000 scrap copper 567,622 scrap copper 21,110 Westphalia crude copper 87,695 crude copper 14,000

Origin looted in southern France bought in France bought in France looted in southern France looted in occupied France bought in France looted in southern France looted in southern France looted in southern France looted in southern France bought in France bought in France looted in occupied France looted in occupied France looted in occupied France looted in occupied France looted in occupied France looted in occupied France looted in occupied France looted in occupied France bought in France bought in France

*Sales and withdrawls from several dumps took place between the date of the German surrender and the date on which the dumps were frozen. ** Does not include figures for Norddeutsche Affinerie, Hamburg source: Data from Public Record Office, British Foreign Office 1039/649

Monthly Shipments of Metal Derived from Bronze Statuary, GIRM to ROGES, 19421

Table 6 

Month

Kilograms

Francs*

Shipments

133,794 51,101 88,524 68,610 25,273 19,660 63,055 33,545 — 494,106 — — 977,668

6,957,288 2,656,652 4,603,128 4,087,720 1,339,573 1,022,320 3,278,866 1,744,340 — 22,001,319 — — 47,691,206

15 7 10 8 3 3 8 5 — 61 — — 120

January February March April May June July August September October November December Total

There were no data for September, November, or December 1942. * The price of copper was 52 francs/kilogram, until October when it dropped to 42.2 francs/kilogram. source: Data from CHAN, 68 AJ 409

1

600,000

Weight in Kgs

500,000

400,000

300,000

200,000

100,000

Figure 4 

1942

be r N ov em be r D ec em be r

st

be r

O cto

em

Se pt

Au gu

Ju ly

Ju ne

German Imports of French Bronze Derived from Statues and Monuments,

source: Data from CHAN, 68 AJ 409 50

M ay

Ap ril

y M ar ch

ru ar

Fe b

Ja n

ua ry

0

Vichy’s Bronze Mobilization Campaign  51

Several developments in the fall of 1942 led Germany toward total war and would have serious implications for French resources, and for France as a whole. The first was Soviet resistance on the eastern front. The drive to mobilize all remaining reserves of personnel and materiel from the home front was rooted in the need to mitigate the high losses suffered by the Wehrmacht during the first months of Operation Barbarossa.6 Fighting around Stalingrad had begun on August 9, 1942, with the Wehrmacht meeting stiff Russian resistance. Heavy fighting continued into the autumn, and the Russian Red Army launched its counterattack on November 19. Adolf Hitler’s grave miscalculation of the invasion of the Soviet Union was thus painfully apparent by late summer 1942. It was obvious by this point that Germany would have to invest substantially more resources in the eastern front if its armies were to survive the Russian winter, let alone hold their territorial gains. Germany also suffered major setbacks in North Africa during the fall of 1942. The battle of El Alamein (October 23–November 4) saw the Germans driven back into Libya. American forces landed in Algeria, Oran, and Casablanca on November 8, establishing a decisive second front in North Africa. Facing this onslaught, Vichy forces ceased all resistance, and the Allies continued their advance into Tunisia. Even Germany’s position in Western Europe was threatened with the August 19, 1942, Allied raid on Dieppe. Although the raid was disastrous for Allied forces, Dieppe underscored Germany’s increasingly isolated position. The Allies were threatening occupied Europe on all sides. Total mobilization of all available resources was essential. The worsening course of the war for Germany and the Third ­Reich’s turn to total war boded ill for France. Axis setbacks in North Africa prompted the German occupation of the southern zone—Vichy’s jurisdiction—on November 11, 1942, and German losses on the eastern front prompted an intensification of German exploitation of the French economy.7 According to Alan Milward, Germany’s strategy of blitzkrieg was undone—militarily and economically—on the eastern front. A drawn-out war with the Soviet Union obliged Germany to turn all available resources toward increasing war production. Albert Speer, appointed to oversee armament production in February 1942, aimed for drastic limitations on production in the consumer sector to increase the output of armaments. Between spring 1942 and July 1944, Speer’s ministry managed to triple

52  Chapter 3

German armaments production. This, of course, had a profound impact on occupation policy in France. From the moment when this wholesale conversion of the German economy and its administration to the needs of a war of mass-production started, both the limited utilization of the French economy and the machinery by which this utilization was carried out began to change. Germany’s increased interest in the French economy before January 1942 indicated the strains of her own Blitzkrieg economy. After that, the greater degree of intervention in France was the result, not so much of ad hoc decisions, as of a conscious and deliberate change of policy.8

The domestic situation in Germany also led to an increased exploitation of France in the fall of 1942. Germany’s turn to total war was initially aimed at harnessing the domestic economy. In the early months of 1942, domestic production increased rapidly, largely because of economic reorganization and tapping unused reserves. Production began, however, to slow considerably by the summer: “The question of exploitation of the occupied western territories came once again into the foreground of considerations. Ought not a much greater demand be made on French resources?”9 This fundamental change in German domestic policies took the form—in France—of an intensification of existing ones. With the German occupation of the southern zone, the importance of the Armistice Commission also declined. The priority of creating a full war economy in Germany meant that the German armaments ministry, under Speer’s leadership, began to take a direct interest in France. The German occupation of the southern zone and the Third Reich’s turn toward total war led to a significant weakening of Vichy’s position. Vichy’s sovereignty became increasingly illusory and, consequently, the implementation of economic policy involved far less negotiation with France. In place of the Armistice Commission, Albert Speer increasingly became the arbiter of France’s economic destiny.10 As for the bronze mobilization campaign itself, the peak in the export of statue metal in October 1942 appears after a full year of demolition and processing of public statuary. From January to late summer 1942, the majority of French statuary was dismantled, collected, sorted, and ­smelted. The foundation for this “resource extraction” had been laid between November 1940 and October 1941 in the creation of an effective system for the procurement of nonferrous metals from France. By autumn

Vichy’s Bronze Mobilization Campaign  53

1942, when French resources were in great demand, this system ensured that they were available for the German war effort.

The “Bronze Administration” What is the role of the State in the Fine Arts? The state must protect and conserve artistic patrimony; it must defend against progressive degradation, maintain and save our historic monuments, and protect the treasures held by our museums.11 The speed with which works of art have been removed to be sent to the foundry is not lost on public opinion.12

The mobilization of bronze statues differed from the other metal recovery campaigns because it required a much more complex administrative system than the other drives, and because the role of that administration proved to be enormously controversial. Because the source of the metal to be mobilized was not simply recycled consumer goods or commercial hardware, but cultural patrimony, the mobilization was not only the domain of the Ministry of Industrial Production, but also of the Ministry for National Education and Youth and its General Secretariat for Fine Arts. Differing ideas about the value to be attributed to this patrimony sparked conflict within and between these branches of the state administration. The bronze mobilization campaign was overseen by two bodies: the Ministry of Industrial Production’s Commissariat for the Mobilization of Non-Ferrous Metal, and the Comité Supérieur, in the Fine Arts Section of the Ministry of National Education and Youth. The Commissariat for the Mobilization of Non-Ferrous Metal, as with the other metal drives, supervised the removal, transportation, and melting of the statues, and the sale and shipment of the metal by the GIRM. Eleven regional delegations of the commissariat were responsible for coordinating and implementing the campaign throughout the country. The metal collected from each region was transported to collection centers in each delegation, and subsequently fed six demolition centers in the occupied zone, and one—in Lyon—in the unoccupied zone.13 Although this process was coordinated by the Ministry of Industrial Production, it was implemented by private enterprise.14 Local contractors were hired by the GIRM to remove statues from their plinths and transport them to the regional triage and processing facilities. The demolition centers were also private plants contracted by the GIRM to process the metal.15

54

I - - - · Communication

I

- - - Bureaucracy

Etat Franc;:ais

I

Marshal Petain-Head of State

7

'

I

I

Admiral Darlan-Vice-President of Council Law of October 11, 1941

~

-

Ministry of the Interior Pierre Pucheu

Ministry of National Education Jerome Carcopino

-r

Ministry of Industrial Production Fran