Abstract
“Épuration.” The word smacks of heresy. It leaves behind the scent of political justice and popular tribunals; it evokes the grand passions of Saint-Just or the hysterical crowd of Fritz Lang’s M. If the word “collaboration” has progressively become known as a synonym for compromise and indeed treason (first during the Occupation, and certainly after the Liberation), the word used to designate only a banal participation in the oeuvre commune.
This essay originally appeared as “Épuration, histoire d’un mot” in Baruch 2003, pp. 19–33. This chapter was developed together but written separately: Emmanuelle Loyer wrote the introduction and the first part; Alya Aglan the second part; and they co-wrote the conclusion. Alya Aglan is Professeure des Universités at the University of Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne and researcher in the Identités, Relations Internationales et Civilisations Européennes research unit. Emmanuelle Loyer is Professeure des Universités à Sciences Po Paris. This chapter was translated by Benn E. Williams.
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Notes
- 1.
The French word épuration is generally translated into English as “purge” and occasionally as “purification.” The translator’s notes are bracketed within the authors’ or marked as “NdT.” Whenever possible, references have been made to English-language editions and the references have been updated and adapted for this publication—NdT.
- 2.
Marrus and Paxton 1981, p. 351.
- 3.
See Simonin 2003, pp. 38–60. [Cf. Ibid. 2008.].
- 4.
- 5.
Based on a small investigation of the great dictionaries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Pierre Larousse’s Grand Dictionnaire, Emile Littré’s Dictionnaire de la langue française, B. Dupiney de Vorepierre’s Dictionnaire française illustré et Encyclopédie universelle (1876), Dictionnaire de la Académie française (1932), and Trésor de la langue française, vol. 8. Rousseau provides an example of this moral usage: “I love not at all that with children one affects a too purified language and then one takes long detours to avoid calling things by their true name.”
- 6.
See Brunot 1937, pp. 818ff.
- 7.
- 8.
Furet 1989, pp. 704–705.
- 9.
Robespierre 1967.
- 10.
Saint-Just 1968, p. 202. In his speech of 30 October 1793, Saint-Just extolled the permanent épuration of the Administration, too. (Rapport sur la nécessité de déclarer le gouvernement révolutionnaire jusqu’à la paix), pp. 168–183.
- 11.
Ibid., p. 191.
- 12.
Ozouf 1989, p. 782.
- 13.
Brunot 1937, p. 819: once it has passed by the crucible of the operatory medicine (this rapprochement between the political operations and the practices of the apothecaries is often done in public by derision), “a society was declared regenerated, it is the normal word.”
- 14.
To avoid weighing down the text, we stick to Robespierre and Saint-Just, but one finds numerous occurrences of the word “épuration” in the period’s discourse, for example, by Billaud-Varenne.
- 15.
According to the interpretation presented by François Furet in part two (“Ending the Revolution”) of Furet 1992.
- 16.
Chateaubriand 1973, p. 827.
- 17.
See Furet 1992, p. 282.
- 18.
See Simonin 1998, p. 57. Based on surveys of Benjamin Constant’s Mémoires sur les Cent-Jours (1829), Guizot’s Du gouvernement de la France depuis la Restauration et du ministère actuel (1820), and M. Bérenger’s De la justice criminelle en France (1818), Simonin concludes: “‘Épuration’ is a word that is not part of the political vocabulary of the men of the Restoration.”
- 19.
For the occurrences of the word “épuration,” see Dubois 1962, p. 296. Certain people, for example Jules Vallès and the painter Gustave Courbet, did not value—and in fact opposed—this operation of linguistic mimicry.
- 20.
Issued by Jules Ferry, the decree of 29 March 1880 broke up unauthorized religious congregations in France as part of a larger project of secularizing French society. Later, military personnel and magistrates refusing to sanction the separation of church and state would purge themselves—NdT.
- 21.
See Association française pour l’histoire de la justice 1995.
- 22.
See Prost 1974.
- 23.
See Machelon 1976, p. 289, where both F. d’Aillières’ study entitled “Les épurations administrative. Notes statistiques (1877–1880),” which appeared in the liberal Catholic organ Le Correspondant (25 February 1881), and P. de Witt’s legitimist brochure L’Epuration sous la Troisième République d’après le Journal official et l’Almanach national (1887) are cited.
- 24.
See Halévy 1937—NdT.
- 25.
The illusion of loyalism of the servants of the State was, however, not shared by the most lucid among them (see Zay 1954), but the principles of neutrality of public powers and the equal access to the State’s functions were no doubt, nonetheless, more anchored in the politico-administrative mores while the Popular Front’s logic of unanimity and reconciliation, quite strong at the beginning, could have played equally.
- 26.
See Laurent 2001, pp. 420–422.
- 27.
Named after a thick Mediterranean shrub (maquis or macchia), these anti-Nazi guerilla movements were concentrated in sparsely populated mountainous and forested areas—NdT.
- 28.
Henri du Moulin de Labarthète, former director of the civil cabinet of Marshal Pétain 1946, p. 275.
- 29.
Edouard Daladier was elected President of the Council in February, 1934, on the heels of the Stavisky Affair and with the support of the socialists. The latter demanded the replacement of the local prefect of police, Jean Chiappe, whom they accused of having impeded the Stavisky case. Right-wing leagues organized a pro-Chiappe demonstration for 6 February 1934 that quickly degenerated into anti-republican riot and led to the collapse of Daladier’s new government. Surrealist-turned-journalist Roger Vailland wrote about the events in the afternoon edition of the local newspaper—NdT.
- 30.
Le Maréchal et sa doctrine, brochure, 1943. See Peschanski 1987, pp. 145–166.
- 31.
Message du maréchal Pétain, 11 juillet 1940, in Pétain 1941.
- 32.
Loi du 22 juillet 1941, “relative aux enterprises, biens et valeurs appurtenant aux Juifs,” Journal official (26 August 1941) in Les Juifs sous l’occupation 1982, 62–66.
- 33.
Le Maréchal et sa doctrine, brochure, 1943 [The German army began its western offensive on 10 May 1940 and invaded the French Channel Islands on 30 June 1940, by which time the French government had left Paris, ultimately seating itself in Vichy.]
- 34.
- 35.
La Gerbe (26 June 1941), qtd. in Ory 1977, p. 170.
- 36.
A second law, from 17 July 1940, also “relative aux magistrats, fonctionnaires et agents civils ou militaires de l’Etat relevés de leurs fonctions,” Journal official (18 July 1940) left a free path to arbitrariness by authorizing the exclusion of public agents judged undesirable “by decree taken from the sole report of the appropriate minister and without any other formalities.” Baruch 1997, pp. 120–121.
- 37.
Synthèse des rapports, 11 octobre 1940, AN 2AG613, qtd. in ibid., p. 123.
- 38.
Ibid., pp. 656–657, annexe 8, “Bilan d’application de la loi du 17 juillet 1940 au 29 avril 1941.” See, too, Laguerre 1988, pp. 3–15.
- 39.
Venner 2000, p. 570. [The organization’s full name was Ligue française de l’épuration, d’entraide sociale et de collaboration européenne].
- 40.
Ory 1976. [Jacques Doriot and fellow nationalistic ex-communists formed the Parti populaire français (PPF) in June 1936 in order to oppose the Popular Front. The collaborationist French militia Légion des Volontaires Français contre le Bolchévisme (LVF) was founded in July 1941 and in 1944 folded into the Division Charlemagne, a Waffen-SS unit composed French volunteers who fought the Bolsheviks on the Eastern Front]
- 41.
From December 1940 to August 1944, a single article in Libération-Nord entitled “Épuration” in the 21 December 1943 issue (no. 160) announced the implementation and the principles of the Commission d’épuration in Algiers, presided over by Charles Laurent, secretary of the Fédération des fonctionnaires (CGT).
- 42.
Défense de la France (no. 31, 20 April 1943) opportunely recalls the text of a decree, not abrogated, taken by the Convention, on 7 January 1793, that stipulates in the first article: “All the French who have accepted or will accept hereafter a civil service position in the parts of the Republic invaded by enemy powers, are declared traitors to the homeland and outlaws.”
- 43.
Excerpt of an article entitled “De quoi s’agit-il? L’épuration,” Le Creuset no. 3 (15 January 1945), unearthed and quoted in extenso by Rouquet 1993, p. 277.
- 44.
The résistants did not wait until the Liberation to proceed to the execution of traitors, with or without a trial, in an expedient manner in each case. This was the case of the police prefect of the Rouen region, André Parmentier, condemned to death by “the secret audience” of 2 August 1943. The CFLN took the decision to judge Pétain and his ministers on 3 September 1943 and it arrested Pierre Boisson, P.-E. Flandin, and Marcel Peyrouton on 21 December. Finally, the trial and execution of Pierre Pucheu—called the “French minister of the Führer” by Franc-Tireur—announced on 20 March 1944 that the purge had definitely begun. Philippe Henriot, information minister for the Vichy government, was in turn executed on 28 June 1944 after having been sentenced to death by the Conseil national de la Résistance.
- 45.
Libération-Nord, no. 4 (22 December 1940). [The underground newspaper turned resistance movement was largely socialist].
- 46.
Ibid., no. 5 (29 December 1940).
- 47.
Ibid., no. 9 (26 January 1941).
- 48.
Ibid., no. 6 (5 January 1941).
- 49.
Franc-Tireur (1 March 1944). [A resistance movement, founded in Lyon in November 1940, and underground newspaper that would later merge with Combat and Libération-Sud to create Jean Moulin’s Mouvements unis de la résistance (MUR)].
- 50.
Libération-Nord promised the publication of a “little black Directory of Arts and Letters where would figure the names of all the scholars who committed treason either out of approval, cowardice, or self-interest” (no. 171, 14 March 1944).
- 51.
Jacquelin 1945.
- 52.
Resulting from the fusion, in 1943, of Charles De Gaulle’s Comité national français in London and General Henri Giraud’s Commandement civil et militaire in Algiers, the Comité français de la Libération nationale was responsible for both coordinating the French war effort against the Axis Powers and preparing the eventual Liberation—NdT.
- 53.
Novick 1968, p. 27.
- 54.
- 55.
La Vie ouvrière (Nord), special issue of September 1942, cited in Novick 1968, p. 25. [A communist-linked underground newspaper created in 1940 by former members of the Confédération générale du travail unitaire].
- 56.
Circulaire des groups francs des MUR (s.l.n.d. [1944]), quoted in Michel 1962, p. 338.
- 57.
Défense de la France, no. 44 (15 March 1944), quoted in Novick 1968, p. 31. [Officially created by the Vichy government in 1943 and under the leadership of its secretary-general Joseph Darnand, the fascist paramilitary Milice hunted résistants, helped to track Jews, and ostensibly maintained order].
- 58.
Baudot 1971, pp. 23–47.
- 59.
Michel 1962, p. 338.
- 60.
Ibid., p. 439.
- 61.
Ibid.
- 62.
Ibid.
- 63.
“Législation sur les responsabilités et les sanctions d’après Résistance, no. 6, 25 janvier 1943,” in Michel and Mirkine-Guetzévitch 1954, pp. 251–261.
- 64.
- 65.
Extrait du premier projet commun du CNR, discuté en juillet 1943, in Andrieu 1984, annex II, pp. 141–144.
- 66.
Second projet de charte soumis au CNR, novembre 1943, proposé par le Front national in ibid., annex 3, pp. 145–148.
- 67.
The word does not even appear in the definitive version of the Resistance’s action program dated 15 March 1944 and approved unanimously.
- 68.
Novick 1968, p. 21.
- 69.
In impeccable De Gaullien style, he declared on 8 August 1943 in Casablanca: “It is hardly worth stating, quite to the contrary, that the country must omit from punishing those who betrayed it and delivered to the perpetrators and who, under the irritating pretexts of pardon, invoked either by the guilty, or in the world of the councilors without French responsibility, France can blunt the double-edged sword of her justice. But no! The national union cannot occur and cannot continue if the state distinguishes between the good servants and punish the criminals […] there is only one word to use: ‘Treason,” and only one thing to do: ‘Justice!’ Clemenceau said: ‘The country will know who defended her.’ We say: ‘One day, the country should know who avenged her!’ Gaulle 1970, pp. 336–337.
- 70.
Second projet de charte soumis au CNR, proposé par le Front national, novembre 1943, in Andrieu 1984, annex III, pp. 145–148.
- 71.
Ibid., 105.
- 72.
An article by G. Cogniot summarizing the 31 August 1944 meeting of the Communist Party’s central committee, L’Humanité (1 September 1944), quoted in Andrieu 1984, p. 106.
- 73.
“Le movement de Résistance et les partis,” Libération-Nord no. 125 (20 April 1943) in Michel and Mirkine-Guetzévitch 1954, p. 261.
- 74.
The death sentence handed down to Pucheu in Algiers and his execution are saluted by articles entitled “Pour les traîtres, la mort!,” Libération-Nord no. 171 (14 March 1944) and “Le châtiment,” ibid., no. 172 (21 March 1944).
- 75.
Krieg 2000, pp. 418–423. Krieg quotes examples of this difficulty in completely accepting the term “épuration”: Serge Ravanel, propos reported by Rosenzweig, Le Monde (13–14 November 1994), p. 17: “It was the purge for us. Moreover, the word purge is hideous. One has the impression of a soap that cleans. It was not that. In fact, we were at war, there were adversaries and at the time we thought that when you find yourself face-to-face with a traitor, a man who doomed Frenchmen to their death, well, one punishes him as such. It is not épuration. It is something completely different….” The celebrated word of Camus in Combat, (30 August 1945): “The word épuration was already painful enough in itself, the thing became odious” in Esprit (1 December 1944): “The épuration! The term has moralist and totalitarian consonances that sometimes bother us.”
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Aglan, A., Loyer, E. (2014). “Épuration”: History of a Word. In: Israël, L., Mouralis, G. (eds) Dealing with Wars and Dictatorships. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-6704-930-6_2
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