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‘French airmen and the challenges of post-war order: francophone literary figures during the second world war’

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Abstract

This paper will examine the political thought of a selection of literary figures who fought in the Free French air forces during the Second World War: Romain Gary, Joseph Kessel and Antoine de St Exupery, all of whom fought under the Free French colours in the Royal Air Force. I intend to show how the literary output of these writers all, in their different ways, reflected the feelings of humiliation felt by the French in exile about the defeat of 1940, and how they suggested ways for France to recover in the post-war era. Their thinking about French domestic politics, their Allies (especially the British) and the future of Europe are all dominant themes. The writings of all of these personalities also reflect a strong belief in a future European détente in which the British and Americans have a lesser role than the one they often envisaged for themselves in the Washington-based ‘post-war planning’ process.

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Notes

  1. Gary was born in Vilnius, then in Poland, now in Lithuania; Kessel was Russian, though he was born in Argentina to Lithuanian parents). Both were naturalised French citizens, and both served in the French air force within the RAF during the war. Gary’s life in Vilnius and Nice before the war was described by Romain Gary, in La promesse de l’aube (Paris: Gallimard, 1960). Gary’s post-war works also include: Les racines du ciel (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), and; La vie devant soi (under the pseudonym of Emil Ajar), (Paris: Gallimard, 1982). Both of these latter books received the prestigious Prix Goncourt.

  2. Hereafter ‘St-Exupéry’, though ‘Saint-Ex’ was the acronym favoured by Raymond Aron: Antoine de St-Exupéry, Ecrits de Guerre, 1939–1944, (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), Préface by Raymond Aron, 12. I have used this edition. In English: Wartime Writings, 1939–1944, (New York: Harcourt, 1986). I will also use his: Pilote de Guerre: Mission sur Arras (New York: Editions de la Maison Française, 1942 and Paris: Gallimard, 1972). For biographies see:  Dominique Lablanche, Stacy de La Bruyère, Françoise Bouillot, Saint-Exupéry: Une vie à contre-courant (Paris: Albin Michel, 1994); In English: Stacy Schiff, Saint-Exupéry: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994); Paul Webster, Antoine de St-Exupéry: The Life and Death of the Little Prince (London: Pan Macmillan, 1993). On Aron (in English) see; Olivier Schmitt (ed.) Raymond Aron and International Relations (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018).

  3. On Kessel, see: Yves Courrière, Joseph Kessel, ou Sur la piste du lion (Paris: Plon, 1985). He was the author after 1918 of about 85 books, many of them autobiographical and often about Russia and central Asia, where his most famous book Les Cavaliers (Paris: Gallimard, 1967) is set. He also inspired a number of films, including Belle de Jour, (1967, directed by Luis Bunuel) which starred Catherine Deneuve, and which was based on a novel by Kessel, as was The Horsemen (1971, directed by John Frankenheimer).

  4. André Malraux was a major literary and cultural figure in France and beyond, whose most famous book is (probably) La condition humaine (Paris: Gallimard, 1933), an account of the massacres in Shanghai of Chinese Communists by Nationalists in 1927, which Malraux witnessed. Close to Charles de Gaulle after the war, he served as de Gaulle’s ambassador to Beijing in the 1960s and as a cultural ambassador in the USA and elsewhere: Odile Rudelle, ‘Malraux et de Gaulle’, Vingtième Siècle: Revue d’histoire, No 14, April–June 1987, 103-4 is a very short overview; a fuller treatment is: Herman Lebovics, ‘André Malraux: A Hero for France's Unheroic Age’, French Politics and Society, Vol. 15, No. 1, ‘La France à la recherche de ses universités’ (Winter 1997), 58–69.

  5. St-Exupéry, Ecrits de Guerre, ‘lettre à X’, December 1939, 43.

  6. Andrew Williams, “France and the Origins of the United Nations, 1944–1945: “Si La France ne compte plus, qu’on nous le dise”’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, June 2017. See also: Andrew Williams, France, Britain and the United States, 1940–1961: A Reappraisal (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

  7. Bullitt to FDR, 29 January 1943 and 12 May 1943, FDR PSF Secretary’s Files, Box 24, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library (hereafter FDR Library).

  8. Andrew Williams, Failed Imagination: The Anglo-American New World Order from Wilson to Bush (Manchester: Manchester U.P., 2007), chap. 3, 90-92. For an excellent overview of American plans see: David Mayers, America and the Postwar World: Remaking International Society, 1945–1956 (London: Routledge, 2018). On Welles see: Christopher O’Sullivan, Sumner Welles, Post-War Planning, and the Quest for a New World Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), and; Simon Rofe, Franklin Roosevelt’s Foreign Policy and the Welles’ Mission (London: Palgrave, 2007). The official history of Post-War Planning is: Harley Notter, Post-War Foreign Policy Preparation, 1939–1945, (Washington: US Department of State, 1949).

  9. Hugh R. Wilson, ‘Memorandum on World Order’, 22 January 1940, Berle Papers, Box 54, FDR Library.

  10. Emmanuelle Loyer, Paris à New York: Intellectuels et artistes français en exil, 1940–1947 (Paris: Grasset, 2005), chap. 1.

  11. For more on this see Williams, France, Britain and the United States, Vol 2: 1940–1961, chap. 2, 119-120.

  12. Emilio Gentile, L’Apocalypse de la modernité (Paris: Flammarion, 2011), 55.

  13. Gentile, L’Apocalypse de la modernité, ibid.

  14. André Malraux, l’espoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1937)—English version: Man’s Hope (New York: Modern Library, 1941); the film was called Espoir: Sierra de Teruel, in black and white, not released in France until 1945.

  15. For an overview of de Gaulle in the 1960s see: Garret Joseph Martin, General de Gaulle’s Cold War: Challenging American Hegemony, 1963–1968 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2013). See also: Carolyne Davidson, “Dealing with de Gaulle: The United States and France”, in Christian Nuenlist, Anna Locher and Garret Martin (eds), Globalizing de Gaulle: International Perspectives on French Foreign Policies, 1958–1969 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010), 112.

  16. Frank Costigliola, France and the United States: The Cold Alliance, 1940–1990 (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992).

  17. R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946), p. 20.

  18. Gyorgy (Georg) Lukacs, The Theory of the Novel (London: Merlin, 1971b) (1916); History and Class Consciousness (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1971a) (1920) and; The Historical Novel (London: Merlin, 1962) (1955), 10-15.

  19. Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence (New York: Peter Smith, 1915) (first published in French in 1906). On Georg Lichtheim see in particular: A Short History of Socialism (London: Weidenfeld, 1970), and; Thoughts Among the Ruins: Collected essays on Europe and beyond (London: Weidenfeld, 1973).

  20. Lukacs, The Historical Novel, 13.

  21. Lichtheim, Short History of Socialism, 305.

  22. Notably: Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, La Comedie de Charleroi (Paris: Gallimard, 1934), and Socialisme fasciste, (Paris: Gallimard, 1934); Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Voyage au bout de la nuit (Paris: Editions Denöel, 1932).

  23. Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1980). This term refers to those who fought in the Great War.

  24. Joseph Kessel, Les Temps Sauvages (Paris: Gallimard, 1975). It might be noted that by the time he arrived in Russia in 1919 the war was over, but his observations of the Vladivostok area are remarkable. Most of his time getting there, in place, and returning to France was spent under the influence of alcohol.

  25. Courrière, Joseph Kessel, 92.

  26. Robert Aron and Arnaud Dandieu, Décadence de la nation française (Paris: Editions Rieder, 1931) and; La revolution nécessaire (Paris: Editions Rieder, 1933).

  27. Antoine de St-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1939) [In French: Terre des Hommes 1939], and; Le petit prince (Paris: Gallimard, 2007) [first published 1943].

  28. Gary, La promesse de l’aube, 18-19. Here quotes are from the 1980 ‘definitive’ edition. The English edition is: Promise at Dawn (London: Penguin, 2018).

  29. Gary, La promesse de l’aube, ibid. This book was made into a film in 2017 by Eric Barbier. See also: Laurent Seksik, Romain Gary s’en va-t-en guerre (Paris: Flammarion, 2017).

  30. Romain Gary, Education européene (Paris: Gallimard, 1956) [first published 1945], 76–77, 89 and 246.

  31. St-Exupéry, Pilote de Guerre, 15-18, 25-30.

  32. St-Exupéry, Pilote de Guerre, 25, 39 and 77.

  33. Antoine de St-Exupéry, Citadelle (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), 7–8; Ecrits de Guerre, 1939–1944, op.cit.

  34. Andrew Williams, ‘Charles De Gaulle: The Warrior as Statesman’ Global Society: Journal of Interdisciplinary International Relations, Vol 32, Issue 2, April 2018,162-175.

  35. See: Jean Monnet, Mémoires (Paris: Fayard, 1976), 14-24. See also Williams, France, Britain and the United States, 1940–1961, 139-140.

  36. Aron, quoting Maritain, in: St-Exupéry, Ecrits de Guerre, 1939–1944, 11 - 13. On England, 49: ‘lettre à X’, end December 1939.

  37. The contact with the Lindbergh is evoked in the documents ‘Aux Américains’ and ‘Ecrire, mais avec son corps’ [‘writing with his own body’] where St-Exupéry pleads with Anne Morrow Lindbergh for American assistance for France, which she refers to in The New York Tribune of 7 June 1940: Ecrits de Guerre, 88-98. St-Exupéry was friendly with both Lindbergh and his wife, though they disagreed over whether Hitler was more of a danger to world peace than the Soviet Union. See also: Antoine de St- Exupéry website, entry on the Lindbergh, https://www.antoinedesaintexupery.com/personne/charles-et-anne-morrow-lindbergh/ (accessed, 25 January 2020).

  38. St-Exupéry, Ecrits de Guerre, ‘1939’, 17.

  39. St-Exupéry, Ecrits de Guerre, radio broadcast of 18 October 1939, 25.

  40. Courrière, Joseph Kessel, 521.

  41. Courrière, Joseph Kessel, 549.

  42. Joseph Kessel, Les Maudru. (Paris: Julliard, 1945), 8, 17, 19.

  43. Kessel, Les Maudru, 39–47.

  44. Kessel, Les Maudru, 49, 62.

  45. Courrière, Joseph Kessel, p. 534-5. Kessel’s books were banned by the German ‘Otto List’ (Otto Abetz was the German Ambassador to Paris), along with those of de Gaulle and many others in September 1940: Courrière, Joseph Kessel, 542.

  46. Kessel, Les Maudru, 72–80, 99–121.

  47. St-Exupéry, Pilote de Guerre, 81.

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    Andrew Williams

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Williams, A. ‘French airmen and the challenges of post-war order: francophone literary figures during the second world war’. J Transatl Stud 19, 54–71 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s42738-020-00062-x

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