A Diary of War and Occupation, 1939-1945
October 10, 2016
Rist (1874–1955), a prominent French political economist, details the entirety of the German occupation of France (June, 1940–August, 1944) in the diary he kept while residing in a villa at Versailles. He records scathing views about the collaborationist Vichy regime, calling Prime Minister Pierre Laval an “ignominious specimen” and “an agent of Germany,” and Chief of State Philippe Pétain “a man who derives his authority only from himself and his perfidy.” Rist also writes regularly of his five sons and frets over the fate of his granddaughters. The chronicle, while often highly informative, can feel overly cerebral and detached. For example, an August 1944 entry notes in passing that “we are in ever greater danger of dying of hunger,” followed by a long quote from Alphonse Toussenel, a 19th-century utopian socialist and anti-Semite whom the collaborationist National Revolutionaries saw as a forerunner of their own views. Rist’s diary is ably translated and annotated, but even though the hundreds of names are explained, some important events are not. Still, this is a valuable account of what one significant and perceptive Frenchman experienced during the protracted disgrace of France as a vassal state of Nazi Germany.