14 conundrums for revolutionaries

Everyone’s talking about the fascist playbook, but who’s talking about the resistance’s?

Calm at Sea (La mer à l’aube) is a 2011 trilingual film set in France during the Second World War (1941). France has been conquered by Germany. The northern half, with its capital at Paris, is under German occupation, and the southern half, with its capital at Vichy, is under the leadership of a German puppet: Marshal Pétain. The film’s subtitles are in English, the French speak French and the Germans speak German (except when they speak to the French, when they speak French).

The film is set in Nantes, which is in the north-west of France, on the River Loire. Very early on in the action, the audience is faced with its first conundrum:

What on Earth are the Germans doing in France?

Naturally, we all know what the Germans are doing in France: they’re occupying it and probably would be doing so even if France hadn’t declared war on Germany the day after Britain did. But, besides occupying it, what do the Germans intend doing with France? I mean, by 1941, the Luftwaffe had put its plans to invade Britain on ice, having resoundingly lost the Battle of Britain, so the strategic purpose of occupying France was, shall we say, fluid by 1941. As occupiers, you might think that the Germans were running things, like the trains, power stations, collecting the rubbish and all that sort of thing, but in fact the railways were being fairly comprehensively sabotaged—by the French—and for the rest it was pretty much the French who were still running France, under German oversight, backed up by around 1,000 officers of the German army.

Political undesirables and petty criminals had been rounded up and put into internment camps, but these were not Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen. Their aim was to keep these pests out of the way. Because, for the rest, the Germans had decided that France was easier to administer if the French population were more or less comfortable with them being the overlords. So, in Nantes, in 1941, the German occupiers were endeavouring to win the hearts and minds of the French people.

That made those administrators who cooperated with the occupiers, including police, prefects and mayors, into collaborators, and that put their existence on a knife-edge, between someone has to do it and not doing it too well.

The next thing that happens in the film is that two young communist Resistance recruits assassinate a German officer in cold blood by shooting him in the back in broad daylight as he strolls around the city. The boys scarper and cannot be found.

The German ambassador communicates to the German army command (note: this is not the SS) that the Führer has issued an order to round up 150 civilians, who are to be executed in three lots of 50 at intervals of a few days, unless the actual culprits for the crime are delivered up to the authorities. Thus arises the second conundrum:

How can the Germans maintain a spirit of cooperation with the local French population if Berlin orders them to execute 150 civilians? The softly-softly policy pursued by the local army command seems not to be appreciated by the high command in Berlin.

The army goes to the prefect and tells him to draw up a list of civilians, and the prefect stands up to them, refusing to compile any such list. Conundrum number three:

How can he compile a list of hostages and still have any hopes of enjoying the trust of the local population?

A much more intimate collaborator with the Germans, who has evidently pitched in his lot with the occupiers, announces that he can help compile the list of names based on internees at the internment camp. The fourth conundrum:

The collaborator will not only work with the Germans but is prepared to betray his fellow countrymen to them in order to curry favour with acts to which the prefect is not prepared to stoop.

Back in the internment camp, a group of intellectuals are confidentially told by one of the (French) guards about the list that is being compiled. Now the conundrums start falling one after the other:

No. 5: If it was our own people who killed the German officer, then it was a mistake.

No. 6: That said, the number of hostages to be taken is a bit high.

No. 7: If the culprits were from Paris, it would be a tactic to relieve pressure on the capital (so, therefore, we should support the action, especially since a previous assassination was punished by executing only three civilians, so the perpetrators could not have known that recriminations would be exacted against 150).

No. 8: What benefit is there from popping off a German officer anyway, unless the order perhaps came from Moscow?

No. 9: Those who give orders to assassinate German officers are cowards. If the penalty is executing hostages, then the revolutionaries who commit assassinations should be prepared to sacrifice their own lives, rather than having us, their comrades, take the rap.

No. 10: The executions will show the French population what the Germans are really like, and that will put a halt to all cooperation with the occupiers, and cause the French to rise up and drive the Germans out. We will not have died for nothing.

No. 11: Martyrdom is for Catholics, not for intellectuals.

No. 12: Why don’t we just do a jail break and make a run for it? We have nothing to lose if we’re to be shot in any case.

No. 13: How do we know they will select us as hostages? Maybe if we lie low, they’ll choose someone else.

No. 14: How do we know it’s not just a bunch of rumours?

Fourteen conundrums for these potential resisters of occupation, and for us as the audience.

The film is based on actual events: the October 1941 assassination of Karl Hotz. So, the film fairly accurately portrays matters of historical record. However, the accuracy or otherwise of the plot in the film is really neither here nor there: the conundrums thrown up by the episode are comprehensible, both to anyone living at that time in that place, and to us living wherever we live now, in our own times. Because the film depicts:

• a struggle between a country that is occupied and its occupiers, and

• an act of violence by the occupied people against their occupiers; and

• it invites us to put ourselves in the shoes of the various parties in deciding how right, wrong or otherwise they are when considering the arguments that each conundrum comprises.

Insofar, the conundrums thrown up by the film could just as easily be thrown up in Minneapolis/St Paul or Israel, or indeed Iran, or London or anywhere where the view might be taken that an overbearing (para-)military force is unjustifiably oppressing a certain group of civilians. That is to say, anywhere where you feel a revolution might not be out of place. And, when a revolution might not be out of place, the main questions are: Who will start it? Who will enlist? And are they prepared to die?

The first conundrum might be adjusted to ask something like: What on Earth is ICE doing in Minneapolis? Do they want to subjugate the population of Minneapolis for ever more? Or drive them out? Or do they seek some benign administration of the city? Or are they wanting to emulate the SS?

• For some, the answers to these conundrums will lie in legal analysis: Hotz was without question murdered. The attack against him was contrary to French law. The authorities attempted to assuage Berlin’s anger by conceding that point and even launching a manhunt for the culprits. Here is their wanted poster:¹

• For others, it will lie in the argument that the Germans had no business being in France and therefore any act intended to punish them for their illegal occupation of the country was justified.

• For yet others, it will lie in a moralistic argument: all killing is wrong, so the French assassins were every bit as sinful as the German executioners. Moreover, the German executioners should never have punished (what turned out to be) 48 people who, they knew, were innocent of the crime for which they were being punished.

• Finally, there are yet those who would argue that law and morals are all overridden by the notion of the assassins having served a far higher purpose and that anyone who is sacrificed for the glory of France dies an honourable death. Which is all very well if you don’t happen to be one of those being martyred (on one view, Hotz himself was martyred …).

Court actions have been instituted or are being considered before the International Criminal Court against Israeli leaders and in the US against Immigration and Customs Enforcement for alleged contraventions of the law (be it international, humanitarian, federal or state law). Should they prove to be in vain, those supporting such legal action would then be faced with the same kind of conundrums as faced the people of Nantes in 1941. And resolving those conundrums could end up being equally uncomfortable for them.

• Some might say the 48 hostages died in vain, so everyone should hunker down.

• Some would say their executions galvanised French people into organising a systematic campaign of resistance, so everyone should man the barricades.

• Some would say the Resistance galvanised Berlin into shifting the more humanistic régime of the Wehrmacht over to the more repressive régime of the SS, which got everyone hunkering down again.

• Some would say, let me out of here.

This mass execution of hostages was a tipping point that was roundly condemned by the president of the United States of America, two months before the US declared war on Germany. President Roosevelt made the following public statement:

The practice comprising mass executions of innocent hostages as reprisals for isolated attacks against Germans in the countries provisionally placed under the Nazi jackboot are an outrage to a world that has already become inured to suffering and brutality. Civilised peoples have long since adopted the principle that no man is to be punished for the acts of another man. Unable to apprehend the persons who participated in these attacks, the Nazis, as is their wont, slaughtered fifty or a hundred innocent people. Those who would collaborate with Hitler or seek to appease him cannot remain unaware of this warning. The Nazis could have learned the lesson of the last war, that they cannot break men’s courage with terror. On the contrary, they are developing their Lebensraum and their New Order by sinking lower than they have ever been into the depths of brutality. These are the acts of desperate men who know deep down that they will never win. Terrorism will never bring peace to Europe. All it does is sow seeds of hatred, which will one day wreak its own terrible reckoning.

Roosevelt wrote these words about the German occupiers of France in 1941. About whom might these words today be written, with little more than some slight geographical adjustment? Israel? The US’s 47th president?

Let me just repeat the relevant passage, but this time adding an adjustment to the geography and the figures:

Civilised peoples have long since adopted the principle that no man is to be punished for the acts of another man. Unable to apprehend the persons who participated in these attacks, the Israelis, as is their wont, slaughtered seventy to two hundred thousand innocent people.

How ironic it is to read how acts condemned by a US president five years before the birth of the present president are almost mirrored by acts by the latter and by his close ally. But, more to the point are the conundrums that sooner or later must be faced up to by those with the courage to resist the infamy being practised by today’s nazis.

1. By Daniel*D for original photo. Xhienne for image retouching. - Image:Expometro GM 2472.JPG which has been digitally untilted, cropped and changed to greyscale., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3006347