The New Vichy Syndrome
The New Vichy Syndrome

Author: Theodore Dalrymple

Publisher: Encounter Books

Published: 2011-11-01

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 1594035679

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Western Europe is in a strangely neurotic condition of being smug and terrified at the same time. On the one hand, Europeans believe they have at last created an ideal social and political system in which man can live comfortably. In many ways, things have never been better on the old continent. On the other hand, there is growing anxiety that Europe is quickly falling behind in an aggressive, globalized world. Europe is at the forefront of nothing, its demographics are rapidly transforming in unsettling ways, and the ancient threat of barbarian invasion has resurfaced in a fresh manifestation. In The New Vichy Syndrome, Theodore Dalrymple traces this malaise back to the great conflicts of the last century and their devastating effects upon the European psyche. From issues of religion, class, colonialism, and nationalism, Europeans hold a “miserablist” view of their history, one that alternates between indifference and outright contempt of the past. Today’s Europeans no longer believe in anything but personal economic security, an increased standard of living, shorter working hours, and long vacations in exotic locales. The result, Dalrymple asserts, is an unwillingness to preserve European achievements and the dismantling of western culture by Europeans themselves. As vapid hedonism and aggressive Islamism fill this cultural void, Europeans have no one else to blame for their plight.

The New Vichy Syndrome
The New Vichy Syndrome

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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A profound malaise haunts Europe. On the one hand, everyone is aware that the continent is no longer in the forefront of anything, that it daily loses ground to other regions of the world, in economic growth, scientific research, influence and power; its population does not even reproduce itself; on the other it is seized with immobility, largely because those who are currently comfortably well-off fear to lose their advantages and privileges. The European Union is both the cause and response to this profound existential unease. It answers France's need to be a great power, Germany's desire to be other than German, and the desire of the defeated or retired politicians of all countries to remain powerful and influential ad infinitum. It is in effect a giant pension fund for superannuated politicians, as well as a trough at which a large bureaucracy can feed. Everyone knows it is corrupt and holds the continent back, but no one sees any mechanism of changing it. In The New Vichy Syndrome, Theodore Dalrymple traces the malaise back to the two great conflicts of the last century, with their disastrous though understandable effects upon self-confidence. As a result of the recent past, Europeans no longer believe in anything other than personal economic security, an increased standard of living, shorter working hours and long vacations in exotic locations. As a result, they are not in a frame of mind to face the challenges before them, whether of increased Islamic penetration or economic competition from the rest of the world.

The Vichy Syndrome
The Vichy Syndrome

Author: Henry Rousso

Publisher:

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13:

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From the Liberation purges to the Barbie trial, France has struggled with the memory of the Vichy experience: a vivid memory of defeat, occupation, and repression. How has this proud nation dealt with les annees noires? What is the collective memory of those few years: what have the French chosen to remember, what have they chosen to conceal?

Vichy's Afterlife
Vichy's Afterlife

Author: Richard Joseph Golsan

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2000-01-01

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9780803270947

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One of the distinctive features of the "Vichy Syndrome"?the persistence of the memory of the Vichy regime in French political and cultural life?is that it has been extremelyødifficult for an authoritative historical discourse to impose itself. Why does Vichy, and all that the name entails, fascinate and even obsess the French, inflecting not only discussions of the past but of the present as well? In Vichy's Afterlife, Richard J. Golsan explores the complexities of some of the most provocative episodes of Vichy's curious persistence in France's national consciousness. He argues that each of these episodes, events, and scandals constitutes a crossroads where history and "counterhistory"?different or competing versions of the past?encounter one another, often with explosive and even destructive consequences.

Vichy
Vichy

Author: Eric Conan

Publisher: UPNE

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780874517958

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A plea for a more moderate, balanced, and accurate view of the Vichy regime.

Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France
Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France

Author: Richard H. Weisberg

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-18

Total Pages: 472

ISBN-13: 1134376626

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The involvement of Vichy France with Nazi Germany's anti-Jewish policy has long been a source of debate and contention. At a time when France, after decades of denial, has finally acknowledged responsibility for its role in the deportation and murder of 75,000 Jews from France during the Holocaust, Richard H. Weisberg here provides us with a comprehensive and devastating account of the French legal system's complicity with its German occupiers during the dark period known as 'Vichy'. As in Germany, the exclusionary laws passed during the Vichy period normalized institutional antisemitism. Anti-Jewish laws entered the legal canon with little resistance, and private lawyers quickly absorbed the discourse of exclusion into the conventional legal framework, expanding the laws beyond their simple intentions, their literal sense, and even their German precedents. Drawing on newly-available archival sources, personal interviews, and historical research, Weisberg reveals how legalized persecution actually operated on a practical level, often exceeding German expectations. Further, he presents a persuasive argument for Vichy law as an acquired Catholic response to a flase notion of Jewish Talmudism. The book also compares Vichy experience to American legal precedents and practices and opens up the possibility that postmodern modes of thinking ironically adopt the complexity of Vichy reasoning to a host of reading and thinking strategies. Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France raises fundamental and disturbing questions about the ease with which democratic legal systems can be subverted.

Nordic Narratives of the Second World War
Nordic Narratives of the Second World War

Author: Mirja Österberg

Publisher: Nordic Academic Press

Published: 2011-01-01

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 9185509493

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How have the dramatic events of the Second World War been viewed in the Nordic countries? In this book leading Nordic historians analyse post-war memory and historiography. They explore the relationship between scholarly and public understandings of the war. How have national interpretations been shaped by official security-policy doctrines? And in what way has the end of the Cold War affected the Nordic narratives? The authors not only present the overarching themes that set the Nordic experience of the Second World War apart from other European narratives, but also describe the distinctive post-war characteristics of Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden. Key concepts such as national identity, memory culture, and the moral turn are placed in their Nordic context. Bringing new nuance to the post-war history of Europe, this is the first work to focus on Nordic narratives of the war, and is valuable reading for students, academics, and all who have an interest in the historiography of the Second World War or modern European history.

France 1940
France 1940

Author: Philip Nord

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2015-03-01

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0300190689

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In this revisionist account of France’s crushing defeat in 1940, a world authority on French history argues that the nation’s downfall has long been misunderstood. Philip Nord assesses France’s diplomatic and military preparations for war with Germany, its conduct of the war once the fighting began, and the political consequences of defeat on the battlefield. He also tracks attitudes among French leaders once defeat seemed a likelihood, identifying who among them took advantage of the nation’s misfortunes to sabotage democratic institutions and plot an authoritarian way forward. Nord finds that the longstanding view that France’s collapse was due to military unpreparedeness and a decadent national character is unsupported by fact. Instead, he reveals that the Third Republic was no worse prepared and its military failings no less dramatic than those of the United States and other Allies in the early years of the war. What was unique in France was the betrayal by military and political elites who abandoned the Republic and supported the reprehensible Vichy takeover. Why then have historians and politicians ever since interpreted the defeat as a judgment on the nation as a whole? Why has the focus been on the failings of the Third Republic and not on elite betrayal? The author examines these questions in a fascinating conclusion.