Research Proposal on "Camus France WWII France Under the Nazis"

Research Proposal 5 pages (1600 words) Sources: 1

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Camus France WWII

France under the Nazis According to Camus

French behavior during World War II would generate a reputation for the political and military orientation that persists even today. The fast and willing acquiescence of France under the Vichy to the will and imposition of Nazi Germany stands even today as an identifying factor of French culture, which aligned according to the cross-section of its aristocratic bent, its fear of the spread of communism and an historical anti-Semitic fervor. All of these factors helped to make it a ripe point of occupation for a spreading European fascism and a demonstration of the malleable nature of human morality. The documentary by Marcel Ophuls the Sorrow and the Pity captures well the shame of French surrender while also providing evidence of a real cultural resistance constituted both of Jewish activists and French nationalists with territorial resentment toward the Germans. Likewise, the telling documentary entitled France Under the Germans would be instructive in showing that this side of the French culture, though largely obscured as elsewhere in Europe by the encompassing horror of Nazism, would be real and moved with boldness and dignity to resist and irresistible force.

The two sides of humanity which are here denoted in France are given new psychological light by the world of such literary beacons as Albert Camus, whose theatre work would reflect a sense of recognition as to the potential depths of human depravity but who would simultaneously express the type of guarded optimism needed to allow even those guilty of the bystander sins seen in France to return the world to normalcy.

<br />To the point, the discussion bred by that which has been offered by Camus and the two documentaries in our consideration help to reveal both the historical and psychological implications of the French experience during a Nazi occupation widely accepted by the French people.

In his the Plague, Camus suggests that there are many levels of denial as to the extremity of a crisis and that there are many individuals who have receded into the distractions of daily routine not out of necessity but in search of an escape from crisis into normalcy. As the author phrases it, "we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream, that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away" (Camus, 37) Perhaps there are few scenarios to which this is more applicable than the threat of fascism and Nazism as they spread throughout Europe. The concession of the French in large part to the incursion of the Nazis suggests the willful misperception of which Camus speaks. For so many French citizens, the phenomenon of which Camus speaks would be manifested in a sense of detachment for the French from the behaviors of the Nazis.

Their acquiescence and cooperation would allow many to protect, as Ophuls documentary shows, their personal interests at least to an extent while simultaneously declining blame for the events tearing through the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. Indeed, to date, France is rarely considered to have been a member of the Axis forces which plunged the world into one of its broadest, longest and most terrible periods of conflict. Yet, all evidence provided by the documentaries denoted here is to illustrate that the connection between the Vichy, the French people and the actions of the Nazis was not as distant or incidental and the French would have history believe.

To the contrary, as Camus seems to imply, the French can be seen as actively consenting to the pestilence approaching so long as they could continue to live their lives.

Thus, to place the events of Nazi occupation in any proximity of the statement offered by Albert Camus in his theatre production, published and performed in 1947, that "there are more things to admire in men than to despise," is to provoke a discourse based on sharp but nuanced ideological divergence that our documentary material shows persisted in France as a matter of both ethnic and class-based struggle. (278) While there can be no doubt that Camus' work, shadowed by the World War II horror's which directly preceded its publication, is darkened by a sense of apocalyptic despair, it suggests a more cyclical quality of man's life. The suffering of death and epidemic which afflicts the town in his play is ultimately countered by the resolution of men to find common ground in rebuilding society. The plague of war and the mechanization of nature that underscore our documentaries are of a far more insidious nature, inclining the notion that man's life is fundamentally engaged in an ongoing battle between good and evil in which both impulses share an equal credence in understanding our true selves.

Albert Camus' play is essentially intended to propose two facts about the human condition. Namely, his first point is that human suffering is inevitable, often terrible and, in coordination with a sense which was most certainly universal at the time, afflicted by man's vain egoistic struggle to be defined significantly amidst tragedies which have no explanation and from which there exists no asylum but chance. The second and more redeeming implication, we may deduce, to Camus' declarative purpose for writing the play, is that mankind is capable of triumphing simply by his capacity to overcome the suffering inflicted upon him by the cruel experience of his being.

How we are to best apply this to the behavior of the French may well be up for debate. The ambiguity of his conception of humanity leaves the opportunity to suggest that those who allowed Nazi occupation were not themselves inherently prone to evil, but instead vulnerable to their own weaknesses. Documentary evidence tends to endorse this idea that for so many in France at the time, the impetus would be survival with a less pronounced sense of ideological insistence concerning the events of World War II. Perhaps we may well say this not just about those who consented to Nazi oversight, but additionally about those who vied so valiantly for resistance. Today, history shows these individuals to have been on the right side of a war with deeply moral implications. However, in the immediate haze and smoke of the war, Camus would write with a different conception of the humanity displayed by France.

In a certain respect, the town in Camus' work seems almost to perform to this point with optimism, which speaks of an essentially admirable creature that is demonstrated as such by the communal resolution of his play. In light of what we can determine from Camus' play, there is a morally ambivalent conception about survivalist instinct which stops short of passing judgment on the evils of those Frenchmen who had allowed or even embraced Nazi Germany. Camus determines through his play that "personally, I've seen enough of people who die for an idea. I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned it can be murderous. What interests me is living and dying for what one loves" (Camus, 149). This is to say that a nobleness of man may be found in the selflessness bred in his commitment to others, whether they be community, family or other individuals but that survival and optimization of the short time which we are given may be most crucial. This leaves us to deduce, whether it is the author's viewpoint or not, that there is a belief at play in the behavior of the French that reduces the philosophical value of heroism, trading such values for a more rationally-founded emphasis on living and living well.

With World War II passed and its wreckage and misery still in vast evidence throughout Europe at the time of his writing, Camus… READ MORE

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