Abstract
The year 1940 has memorably been called the ‘fulcrum of the twentieth century’, given the far-reaching consequences of the Fall of France on the international order. By examining French industrial organisation between the Fall of France and the creation of the ECSC, this book reassesses the legacy of Vichy’s industrial policies of 1940, revealing them to be a turning point with a multifaceted legacy for post-war France and Europe. In addition to identifying previously overlooked yet striking continuities of institutions and individuals, this study allows us to reappraise issues ranging from the influence of industrialists on French and European policy to Jean Monnet’s famous méthode and the delicate question of links from Vichy to the ECSC.
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Notes
- 1.
David Reynolds, ‘1940: Fulcrum of the Twentieth Century?’, International Affairs, 66:2, 1990.
- 2.
See Olivier Dard, Le rendez-vous manqué des relèves des années trente (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2002) and Jackie Clarke, France in the Age of Organization: Factory, Home and Nation from the 1920s to Vichy (Oxford: Berghahn, 2011).
- 3.
Jacques Barnaud, ‘L’Industriel’, Nouveaux cahiers, no. 2, 1 April 1937.
- 4.
‘Maintien éventuel du CO du bâtiment et des travaux publics’, 26 January 1944, CFLN 686, MAE. This observation was made by Leprince.
- 5.
Alain Chatriot, ‘Henri de Peyerimhoff (1871–1953), le gentleman du charbon’ in Olivier Dard and Gilles Richard (eds), Les permanents patronaux: éléments pour l’histoire du patronat en France dans la première moitié du XXème siècle (Metz: Université Paul Verlaine de Metz, 2005), 45–73. Despite having a similar background to many of the Vichy-era industrial leaders, de Peyerimhoff was sacked in 1940 and never regained an influential role within the industry.
- 6.
See, for example, Jean Baumier, La fin des maîtres de forges (Paris: Plon, 1981); Pierre Gerbet, La construction de l’Europe (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1983); Philippe Mioche, ‘Les comités d’organisation de la sidérurgie: un lieu d’affrontement entre modernisateurs de la sidérurgie et gardiens de la profession?’ in Hervé Joly (ed.), Le comités d’organisation et l’économie dirigée du régime de Vichy (Caen: CRHQ, 2004); Annie Lacroiz-Riz, ‘Les comités d’organisation et l’Allemagne: tentative d’évaluation’ in ibid.; Matthias Kipping, La France et les origines de l’Union européenne. Intégration économique et compétitivité internationale (Paris: CHEF, 2002).
- 7.
Eric Bussière, ‘Les milieux économiques face à l’Europe au XXe siècle’, Journal of European Integration History, 3:2, 1997, 5–21; Robert Frank (ed.), Les identités européennes au XXe siècle (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2004); Françoise Berger, La France, l’Allemagne et l’acier (1932–1952): de la stratégie des cartels à l’élaboration de la CECA, PhD thesis, Université de Paris I, 2000.
- 8.
Jean Monnet, Mémoires (Paris: Fayard, 1976), 460.
- 9.
Alan Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation State (London: Routledge, 1992).
- 10.
See Wolfram Kaiser, Brigitte Leucht and Morten Rasmussen, The History of the European Union: Origins of a Trans- and Supranational polity, 1950–1972 (London: Routledge, 2009), 2–4. The authors are generally critical of the ‘nation-focus of modern historians’, which they deride as ‘an endemic intellectual disease’ that can only be remedied by a genuinely transnational approach to history. Milward’s study in fact focuses on governments negotiating and forging coalitions of different interests, both public and private, for the sake of democratic consensus for particular policies. See Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation State.
- 11.
Richard Kuisel, ‘Vichy et les origines de la planification économique, 1940–1946’, Mouvement social 98, 1977, 77–101; Philippe Mioche, Le Plan Monnet. Genèse et élaboration, 1941–1947 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1987).
- 12.
Etienne Hirsch, Ainsi va la vie (Lausanne: Fondation Jean Monnet pour l’Europe, 1988), 89. Cf. Richard Kuisel, Capitalism and the State in Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), Philippe Mioche, Le Plan Monnet (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1987), Eric Roussel, Jean Monnet (Paris: Fayard, 1996).
- 13.
Kuisel, Capitalism and the State, 227.
- 14.
Monnet, Mémoires (Paris: Fayard, 1976), 347.
- 15.
Sherrill Brown Wells, Jean Monnet: Unconventional Statesman (London: Lynne Rienner, 2011), 100 and 247. A similar portrait emerges in the other principal biographies of Monnet; cf. Pascal Fontaine, Jean Monnet l’inspirateur (Paris: Jacques Grancher, 1988), François Duchêne, Jean Monnet. The First Statesman of Interdependence (London: Norton, 1994), and Roussel, Jean Monnet.
- 16.
As discussed in Chapter 8, a number of other individuals, from Georges Bidault to René Massigli to Ernest Bevin, felt marginalised by Monnet when he and Schuman launched the Schuman Plan.
- 17.
Note ‘sur l’organisation de l’Europe d’après-guerre’ and Lettre de Blum-Picard à Monnet, 12 July 1944, AME 56 2, FJME.
- 18.
Pierre Uri was a student of François Perroux at the Ecole d’Uriage, where Reuter was also a lecturer. See also Bernard Bruneteau, Les «collabos» de l’Europe nouvelle (Paris: CNRS, 2016).
- 19.
Antonin Cohen, De Vichy à la Communauté européenne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2012), 4.
- 20.
Ibid., 401–413.
- 21.
Rapport Leprince, 26 January 1944, CFLN 686, MAE.
- 22.
‘Note sur la première étape de la reconstruction en France’, 22 September 1943, AME 33 1, FJME.
- 23.
‘Note sur la répartition des sièges (producteurs et utilisateurs) au Comité consultatif’, 7 June 1952, PU 43, HAEU.
- 24.
This shift towards supposedly apolitical ‘technocrats’ can also be traced to the Vichy regime, with its renunciation of party politics and the emergence of managerial experts in influential positions. See Delphine Dulong, Moderniser la politique. Aux origines de la Ve République (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997).
- 25.
Alan Milward, The Reconstruction of Western Europe (London: Routledge, 1984) and Frances Lynch, France and the International Economy (London: Routledge, 1997).
- 26.
William Hitchcock, ‘France, the Western Alliance, and the Origins of the Schuman Plan, 1948–1950’, Diplomatic History, 21:4, 1997, 603–630.
- 27.
See Bernard Bruneteau, «L’Europe nouvelle de Hitler»: une illusion des intellectuels de Vichy (Monaco: Rocher, 2003).
- 28.
See François Duchêne, ‘Jean Monnet’s Methods’ in Douglas Brinkley and Clifford Hackett, Jean Monnet: The Path to European Unity (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), 184–209.
- 29.
Pierre Ricard was President of the Organisation Committee for Foundry while Robert Baboin was Director for Steel in the Ministry for Industrial Production under Jean Bichelonne. As such, Baboin took part in the meetings of relevant Organisation Committees.
- 30.
On administrative continuities in Italy, see Roy P. Domenico, Italian Fascists on Trial, 1943–1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), Claudio Pavone, Alle origini della repubblica: scritti su fascismo, antifascismo e continuità dello Stato (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1995) and Sabino Cassese, L’Italie, le fascisme et l’Etat. Continuités et paradoxes (Paris: Rue d’Ulm, 2014). Italy’s first member of the High Authority, Enzo Giacchero, was a member of the maquis in northern Italy from 1943. His successor, Piero Malvestiti, was a long-standing opponent of Mussolini’s regime and was convicted for ‘antifascist activities’ in 1934. See Mauve Carbonell, Des hommes à l’origines de l’Europe: biographies des membres de la Haute Autorité de la CECA (Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 2008).
- 31.
Ibid. The notable exception on the German side is Karl-Maria Hettlage, appointed to the High Authority in 1962. During the Second World War he was an advisor to Albert Speer in the Ministry for Armaments and War Production. See Carbonell, ‘Karl-Maria Hettlage (1902–1995): un expert au service de l’Europe et des Allemagnes’, Journal of European Integration History, 23:1, 2006. On the evolution of West Germany’s policies towards individuals with past ties to Nazism, see Norbert Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik: Die Anfänge der Bundesrepublik und die NS-Vergangenheit (Munich: Beck, 1996) and, specifically on German industrialists, S. Jonathan Wiesen, West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past, 1945–1955 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
- 32.
‘Saying the Unsayable about the Germans’, The Spectator, 14 July 1990. Ridley was forced to resign over these comments.
- 33.
See Renaud de Rochebrune and Jean-Claude Hazera, Les Patrons sous l’Occupation (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1995).
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Brunet, LA. (2017). Conclusions. In: Forging Europe: Industrial Organisation in France, 1940–1952. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95198-7_9
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