Visions of the Postwar: The Politics of Memory and Expectation in 1940s France

While emphasizing a rupture between past and present, Pétain often downplayed any gulf between present and future. Soon after the armistice he declared that "a new order is beginning," and he insisted that "from now on it is toward the future that we must turn our efforts."(12) Supporting a portrait of historical time broken into two great categories were sharp contrasts between France's past and a new future order just begun. Before the war, Pétain explained, "the spirit of enjoyment [had] won out over the spirit of sacrifice," but in the new era, he predicted, "you will learn to prefer the joys of difficulties overcome to the easiest pleasures."(13) Whereas the old regime had rested "on the false idea of the natural equality of men," Pétain proclaimed that "the new regime will be a social hierarchy" based on merit and service. In order to end "class struggle, which proved fatal to the nation" in the 1930s, he envisioned the creation of "professional organizations" that would "avoid conflicts by the absolute prohibition of `lock outs' and strikes" and "guarantee the personal dignity of the worker while improving his living conditions up to old age." Pétain also recalled "the powerlessness of the State" in the prewar years, when civil servants were "hampered in their actions by excessively restrictive regulations," and when "majorities succeeded each other in government, inspired all too often by the desire to destroy the rival minority." In the future, he promised, "We will build an organized France in which the discipline of subordinates answers to the authority of leaders in justice for all."(14) While seeking to make sense of France's troubled past, Pétain also offered people hope for a better future and a chance to think about something other than present miseries.
Although Pétain gave France the gift of his optimism to lessen its misery in 1940, that optimism soon began to fade. In a radio speech in December 1940 he again predicted that "the future will be bright," but he also admitted that "the present is indeed dark."(20) In the dualistic structure of historical time of many of his earlier speeches Pétain had conflated present and future, but the more time passed without the promised improvements, the more he had to acknowledge present hardships. In August 1941, he noted that "a veritable malaise is affecting the French people," and he reminded his listeners that "difficult times always follow cruel hours." Aware that Nazi plundering of France was producing hunger and resentment, he called for patience and insisted that collaboration with Germany was "a long-term project [that] has not yet been able to bear all of its fruits." Pétain admitted that France would "continue to suffer," but he promised that "this test of France will end."(21) Yet the suffering only worsened. Although he reiterated his "invincible hope in the future" in his 1942 Christmas message, he refrained from trying to predict the future at all. "I do not know," he lamented, "any more than you, what the new year will bring: misery or relief. Providence has its designs."(22) He might have added that [Hitler] had his designs as well, but they were proving just as opaque to Pétain as the designs of providence.