Représailles et logique idéologico-répressive. Le tournant de l'été 1941 dans la politique répressive du Commandant militaire allemand en France
Résumé
Reprisals and ideological-repressive logic. The turning point of the summer 1941 in the repressive policy of the German Military governor in FranceWith the invasion of the USRR by Germany in June 1941, the perception of the French resistance at the Majestic went through important upheavals. While assaults and assassinations of German soldiers had up until that point been generally attributed private altercations due to the effects of alcohol, the murder of naval reserve officer Alfons Moser on the 21st of August 1941 in Paris is immediately identified by the MBF as a political act, despite the absence of any material evidence permitting its establishment as such.
The repressive policies of the MBF take thus a brutal turn, taking the form of the execution of hostages and then of the first deportations. Most importantly, these policies now begin to principally target ideological enemies of the national-socialist regime, presumed guilty of the attacks. The MBF therefore breaks with its traditional practice of taking hostages. Hostages taken in order to be shot in the case of an attack were no longer to be taken from the leaders of the community, but from the “circle of presumed guilty”, that is to say, in practice, principally communist prisoners – without completely ruling out Gaullists – even when no material proof can link them to the attacks.
While the number of Jewish communists executed during this first series of executions is certainly marginal in terms of how many were actually executed, it is much less so when we remember that the Jewish population represented less than 1 % of the overall number of people living in France. But more importantly, the proportion becomes massive as of December 1941. From then on, Jewish people are, with communists, publically designated by the MBF as “expiatory” victims of the resistance to the occupiers.
The shift that happens from then on, at the same moment that the Nazi genocidal project is taking form, does not signify, however, that the German repression subsequently spared the communists. Indeed, contrary to what is suggested by the communiqués issued by the MBF from late 1941, the majority – that is to say more than 90 % - of Jewish prisoners shot were, like before, close to the communist circles. Between the convoys no. 5 and 6 of Jewish deportations for example, a “retaliation convoy” composed of around 1175 men, mostly communists, departed from Compiegne on the 6th of July 1942 for Auschwitz. Thus, even if the conversion of the policy of repression of the resistance into a radical anti-Semitic policy indeed took place around the end of 1941, the fact remains that it does not dissolve therein.
The motivations underlying the choice taken by the MBF, supported by the local entities of the German military administration, are complex and cannot be reduced to simply pragmatic and objective considerations, but neither can they be reduced to simply ideological considerations. If the MBF employed an ideologically targeted terror in occupied France, it was above all because it considered this terror less detrimental to collaboration in a country where the fight against the internal enemy was defined by the same ideological presuppositions as its own, and which were going to be comforted, a posteriori, by the results of the police investigations. Indeed, the MBF knew that it could count on Vichy’s support, provided that the German repression targeted principally communists and Jews, sparing the majority of the population as well as the community leaders, whose designation as hostages, as was traditionally the practice, seemed incompatible with the state collaboration chosen by the French government. Thus, the singularity of the Vichy régime in occupied Europe is likely not unrelated to the more ideologically marked direction adopted by the German military apparatus of occupied France in its repressive policies. On the other hand, by counting on the anticommunism and anti-Semitism of the French population, the MBF was doubtless looking to isolate resistance fighters designated as vulgar and cowardly criminals from the rest of the national community. The MBF could therefore hope to frighten potential partisans of the resistance, and convince the French people that the repression only affected a certain minority of individuals, who fit a specific political and racial profile.
Whether used simply for political ends, or were the result of a real fear of the threat that the communist and Jewish communities represented for the occupying power, the security-related rhetoric and practices of the military occupation apparatus expressed in any case a virulent anti-Semitism and anticommunism. The vision of the resistance that underlies the often moderate attitude adopted by the MBF in the face of large numbers of hostage executions derives thus from an ideological and racist logic.
Avec l’invasion de l’URSS par l’Allemagne en juin 1941, la politique répressive conduite par le MBF connaît un tournant brutal et s’oriente dès lors principalement contre les ennemis idéologiques du régime national-socialiste, présumés responsables des attentats. Le MBF rompt dès lors avec la pratique traditionnelle de la prise d’otages. Il décide en effet de ne pas prélever les otages destinés à être fusillés puis déportés en cas d’attentats parmi les notables, mais parmi le « cercle des coupables présumés », c’est-à-dire, en pratique, parmi les détenus communistes et bientôt juifs. Le choix opéré par le MBF répond à des motivations complexes qu’on ne saurait réduire, ni à de simples considérations objectives ou pragmatiques, ni à de simples considérations idéologiques. Si le MBF pratiqua en France occupée une terreur idéologiquement ciblée, c’est surtout parce qu’il la jugeait moins préjudiciable à la collaboration dans un pays où la lutte contre l’ennemi intérieur était définie selon des présupposés idéologiques qui rejoignaient largement les siens, et qui allaient être confortés, a posteriori, par les résultats des premières investigations policières. Qu’ils aient été simplement instrumentalisés ou qu’ils aient résulté de réelles inquiétudes devant la menace que représentaient les communistes et les Juifs pour la puissance occupante, le discours et les pratiques « sécuritaires » de l’appareil militaire d’occupation n’en expriment pas moins un anticommunisme et un antisémitisme virulents. La vision de la résistance qui sous-tend l’attitude souvent modératrice adoptée par le MBF face aux exécutions massives d’otages procède ainsi d’une logique idéologique et raciste. URL : http: www.cairn.info/revue-historique-2014-1-page-109.htm (consulté le 05/10/2015)