French Elections 2017

Garson007 said:
How is this revisionists? They were occupied territory at the time! It's the same as having Poland held responsible for Auschwitz.
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No, it was a collaboration voted and agreed for by France.
 
O geesus, another one of these threads where the right will fight the left, Le Pen wins the election and the thread never dies due to all the arguing?
 
f2wohf said:
No, it was a collaboration voted and agreed for by France.
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A "collaboration" that you agree to with a gun to your head isn't much of a collaboration.
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vel%27_d%27Hiv_Roundup
The position of the French police was complicated by the sovereignty of the Vichy government, which nominally administered France while accepting occupation of the north. Although in practice the Germans ran the north and had a strong and later total domination in the south, the formal position was that France and the Germans were separate. The position of Vichy and its leader, Philippe Pétain, was recognised throughout the war by many foreign governments.

The independence, however fictional, had to be preserved. German interference in internal policing, says the historian Julian T. Jackson, "would further erode that sovereignty which Vichy was so committed to preserving. This could only be avoided by reassuring Germany that the French would carry out the necessary measures."
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4 months later even the free zone was occupied
 
NarrowBandFtw said:
A "collaboration" that you agree to with a gun to your head isn't much of a collaboration.
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vel%27_d%27Hiv_Roundup


4 months later even the free zone was occupied
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The choice was between continuing a war and signing an armistice leading to collaboration.

Continuing the war would have ensured the killing of hundreds of thousands if not millions of civilians, so in a sense it was the logical thing to do.

But it remained a choice of Petain.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichy_France
 
f2wohf said:
The choice was between continuing a war and signing an armistice leading to collaboration.

Continuing the war would have ensured the killing of hundreds of thousands if not millions of civilians, so in a sense it was the logical thing to do.

But it remained a choice of Petain.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichy_France
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Right, so do the French people owe reparations or apologies even now when they were forced to choose between such extremes?

I like to rag on them for surrendering too easily, but actually laying blame for making an impossible choice? Doesn't seem fair.
 
NarrowBandFtw said:
Right, so do the French people owe reparations or apologies even now when they were forced to choose between such extremes?

I like to rag on them for surrendering too easily, but actually laying blame for making an impossible choice? Doesn't seem fair.
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The thing about the Vel d'Hiv is that the French police planned and executed it, which was not part of the collaboration agreement at all, and was an extra done by Bousquet to please the Germans.

It used to be done by the German police alone until there, and then the French national train company started to help as well.

This is why the apologies. Chirac outlined it clearly that the crime was to involve the French police when it wasn't needed:

"These black hours will stain our history for ever and are an injury to our past and our traditions. Yes, the criminal madness of the occupant was assisted ('secondée') by the French, by the French state. Fifty-three years ago, on 16 July 1942, 4500 policemen and gendarmes, French, under the authority of their leaders, obeyed the demands of the Nazis. That day, in the capital and the Paris region, nearly 10,000 Jewish men, women and children were arrested at home, in the early hours of the morning, and assembled at police stations... France, home of the Enlightenment and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, land of welcome and asylum, France committed that day the irreparable. Breaking its word, it delivered those it protected to their executioners."
 
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Also, to be noted is that both the fourth and the fifth republic came into existence after the war. Blaming current day France for the atrocities of Vichy France is like blaming current day South Africa for Apartheid. States are independent actors that are distinct from their population.
 
End of the beginning: France’s election

Weary voters may not feel it, but the official French presidential campaign starts only today, ahead of first-round voting on April 23rd. Posters will go up on formal municipal hoardings in every town. All 11 candidates henceforth gain equal airtime. This will be quite a challenge: they include an anti-capitalist Ford factory worker, a Trotskyist high-school teacher and a centrist ex-shepherd. Among the five front-runners, opinion polls have for weeks made the far-right Marine Le Pen and the centrist Emmanuel Macron favourites for the run-off on May 7th. But pollsters have been wrong a lot recently (Trump, Brexit), the share of undecided voters is high and last-minute surges or tactical voting cannot be ruled out. Already, the far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon has overtaken the Socialists’ Benoît Hamon. He could yet snatch third place from the conservative François Fillon. A race already marked by surprises may have more in store.

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Pitbull said:
Given the global shift the last few years, I would actually hedge a bet she does. But who knows.
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Though as I've said, getting the presidency is 50% of the job, you need the parliament and the government.

So far they have less than 10MPs affiliated with them over 577. In the Senate they have 0 senators.
 
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