Denunciation in France during the Second World War is a fascinating and painful subject. No sooner does the historian mention it than comments abound on the nefarious role of concierges, the darkness of the human soul, the treachery of the second sex, or the French tendency, who are supposedly champions in this area.
It is true that the French never denounced as much as during the dark years of the war. But more than the sheer scale of the phenomenon, it was its consequences that profoundly marked the public consciousness: between 1940 and 1944, thousands of individuals paid with their lives for denunciations brought to the attention of the Vichy or Nazi authorities. Undeniably, the shock of defeat and the traumas of war, the German occupation, and the Vichy regime disrupted and perverted the relationship between society and the government.
This original and unprecedented work explores the two sides, political and social, of denunciation during the Occupation, whether it targeted insults to Marshal Pétain, communist activism, Jews, black marketeers, abortionists, or those who refused to comply with the STO (Forced Labor Service). A crucial yet little-known aspect of French history.
Laurent Joly, a research fellow at the CNRS (CRHQ-Caen), is notably the author of Office Antisemitism and The Collaborators.
The following contributed to this work: François-Xavier Nérard, Virginie Sansico, Fabrice Grenard, Raphaël Spina, Marc Bergère, Fabrice Cahen, Christophe Capuano, François Rouquet, Cédric Neveu, Christiane Kohser-Spohn and Benn E. Williams.
This article was modified on March 7, 2016