"This somewhat curious inventory he introduced to a problem and an argument? We must recognize that the speaker greatly exaggerates the influence of Vichy ("France DAfter-war largely rebuilt on the achievements of Vichy. We live largely on the achievements of Vichy"), which sometimes confuses concrete measures and structural reforms and quon easily happen to a rehabilitation plan. The speaker resumes number of stereotypes that go against Vichy acquired strongest historiography: one lentend and that farmers have massively supported Vichy (see our report of Friday's conference in Blois, Fabrice Grenard and Eric Alary, on "The peasant world under Vichy. Myth and Reality"), that they had an almost nonexistent role in the Resistance, Vichy defended the small farmer, névoquant at any time the status of tenant farming and sharecropping resulting from the program CNR. It would have been better to be in the long time, not to assign Vichy which often goes back to a commitment to reform in various settings during the 1930s "
This pretty much sums up the impression that emerges from reading this book: the author strongly exaggerates the influence of Vichy. Book the misleading title moreover, as it amalgam of elements that probably would have occurred regardless of the Vichy regime and thus are not "measures" with the responsibility of decrees reminiscences (the term "legislature" used widely being abusive ) actually taken at the time. It seems that the author, in his determination to stick to the times (Vichy, it was France ...) collates the possible remains of the collaborative to support his argument. While not omitting Pétainists illustrations: francisque gallic, stars Marshal (which of course is written with the capital M) and oak leaves.
Recognize nonetheless that Desprairies Cécile, in the introduction of these so-called "measures" in the paragraph "A little history," recalls the origins. This, mostly in perspective the words and consequently relevancy.
One can reasonably doubt that work when you enter the details and that we see the many errors and approximations that pepper the book. Thus we learn that (small selection):
* Spitfire operate at night (p. 38);
* Power siren is represented in Hz [Hertz] (p. 38);
* Television in France is due to the Germans since 1937 while a daily program is broadcast and the invention of television can not be attributed clearly (p. 39);
* The French "begin to eat rice Camargue» in 1944 (p 75, calculation made this represents approximately 55 g per person per year, including babies and old men ....);
* Playing Mozart but we forget Da Ponte, as Poster page 82 shows the opposite (p. 87);
* The discovery of the Lascaux cave in 1941 would be to the credit of Vichy (p, 106), cave discovered by chance by children ...;
* The first color film released in France "the responsibility of the occupier", as he is Becky Sharp, the first film in Technicolor dated June 1935 and released in France October 4, 1935 (p. 109);
* The invention of color film is due to "Kodachrome" to Kodak, Kodachrome was the name given by the firm to its dandruff reversal films (p. 110);
(Pp. 138-179) * in the "Trades", note a significant oversight, the FNSEA (not that name at the time: General Confederation of Agriculture, but is it a legacy Vichy);
* "Rhône-Poulenc (sic, this name in 1961) [] has partnered with Bayer to manufacture and market aspirin" (p. 204), while the Chemical Society of Rhone factories markets that product since 1908 and the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919, decided that aspirin will now be treated as a prize of war, and the Aspirin brand and its manufacturing process into the public domain;
* For transport, the author forgets the subway regulations dating from Vichy;
* One wonders where the engineers of roads and bridges in the 1960s might well have spread the Paris ring elsewhere than on the old route of the fortifications (p. 233-235) because their predecessors from the same school, had thus planned in the 1940s.
This list is not exhaustive and I leave it to the most attentive readers of the supplement.
Some media, making an extravagant reception to this book (Libération, among others, not to call it), one wonders who read, wrote and said he would feel uncomfortable historians, this could not be more wrong. Long ago that serious historians (them) treated the question correctly without amalgams. Question is no longer much debate elsewhere, any time, anywhere, regimes have succeeded without abolishing everything that had been done before them, if not, for example, the Code Napoleon would not have survived .. .
Needless to draw this kind of tote catalog to be convinced.
Conversely, in the same style, so when the author does write a book about measures and laws of the Third Republic maintained by Petain?
Which, remember, has always kept for him the title of Chairman of the Board (the only one he legally owned ... of the Republic) and which, in its draft Constitution of 31 January 1944, planned to keep for the head of state the title of President of the Republic. In August 1944, he did not attempt to "pass on his powers" to General de Gaulle?
No, sorry, this book is not a historian. Too bad.
