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The wars against the Volsci and Aequi, a forgotten reason of the Gallic sack of Rome ?`/titrebThe Gallic disaster, which happened in Rome in the early 4th century BC, is a historic event which was maybe extracted from a part of its military and political context by a late memory reappropriation. Ancient literary evidences omit some of the tactical and strategical origins of the disaster of the Allia, and explain it by using fables assiging this episode to civic mythology. But the stories of Diodorus and Livy show probably a part of the military context of the event. Indeed, the conflict between the Romans and the Volsci and Aequi escalates during this period and increases the Roman difficulties, in a region that was probably not so controlled as the texts suggest. This pressure perturbed maybe enough the Roman military and political organization to bring an additional explanation to the disorder of the Romans met in front of the Gallic expedition.

The Memorial de Verdun and the aims of a fighting memory: 1959-2011. The Memorial de Verdun has been relatively forgotten by the media, if not by the public, and seems to have lost its place of honour among the French museums of the Great War. Yet, it is still unique compared to the Historial in Péronne or to the new Museum in Meaux : it was designed and desired in the 1960s by the war veterans themselves, who were anxious to make sure that their memory would be passed on to future generations. The history of the Memorial shows their strong emotional investment in the project : most of the men involved had been part of veterans' associations for many years and saw the museum as their last legacy. This led to violent conflicts between them over questions of leadership and organizational details. It also shows the veterans' attachment to the battlefields and the city of Verdun. To build the Memorial, the veterans actually inspired themselves as much from the battle itself as from the construction of memory in Verdun : like the Douaumont Ossuary in the interwar period, the museum was funded by a public subscription meant to establish its national legitimacy. The Memorial was designed as an educational complement to the Ossuary : it became an integral part of the Red Zone and contributed to the landscaping of the battlefields thanks to the money it yielded. In the 1960s, the first exhibition was very much shaped by the veterans' memory as well as by the traditional military history of the war. It has evolved along with the historiography of the First World War : the sufferings of the civilians and the colonial troops, for example, are much more present in the current exhibition. However, the Memorial remains difficult to modernize, precisely because of its long history, which guarantees its authenticity but also subjects it to a phenomenon of path dependence.

Forging the “Christian soldier”. The catholic supervision of the papal and royal troops in France in 1568-1569. This paper deals with a crucial stage in the history of the Church in its relations with war and the army leading to the explicit formulation of a model of the “Christian soldier”, in which the Jesuits played an important role. This model will henceforth shape the conception of warfare and military discipline inspired by the Counter-Reformation all over Christendom, expanding progressively in the second half of the sixteenth century and the seventeenth century. It is in France, during the third civil war, more precisely during the military campaign of 1569, when pope Pius V sent to Charles IX troops to help him in his war against the Protestants, that this model was carried out for the first time. The involvement in France of these Italian troops goes along with the formation of a Jesuit military chaplaincy and the completion by Antonio Possevino of a Handbook of the Christian soldier, the first official manual written under the tutelage of the Company in order to teach the soldiers and, in particular their noble commanding officers, how to carry out a Holy war. Within the logic of a universal struggle against the enemies of the Church as conceived by Pius V (1566-1572), this device involves a process of disciplinarization of the troops, which presupposes to transform the archetype of the glory-seeking knight into the ethics of the service of God in a view of military efficiency. The paper examines the way in which this device of religious tutelage was developed and its confrontation with noble values and practices. It questions the relations of this model with the extreme violence exerted at the battle of Moncontour, along with the failure of the Jesuit chaplains to submit the soldiers to a form of devout discipline.

Eradicating typhus : medical representations and nazi sanitary discourse in the Generalgouvernement of Poland (1939-1944). When German soldiers and civil servants take hold of Poland in 1939, they see this country through the lens of ideas and stereotypes that are already old : the East is a backward, poor and dirty territory. From 1942 onwards, after the decision to kill all the Jews of Europe has been made, films and texts produced by the sanitary offices of the Wehrmacht and of the SS teach the German occupation forces how to « treat » the pathologies encountered in the East – above all typhus, which is meant to be genuinely Jewish. This biological conception of the « Jewish danger » presents the « final solution » as an unavoidable medical treatment, as a sanitary eradication.

Reprisals and ideological-repressive logic. The turning point of the summer 1941 in the repressive policy of the German Military governor in France. With the invasion of the USRR by Germany in June 1941, the perception of the French resistance at the Majestic went through important upheavals. While assaults and assassinations of German soldiers had up until that point been generally attributed private altercations due to the effects of alcohol, the murder of naval reserve officer Alfons Moser on the 21st of August 1941 in Paris is immediately identified by the MBF as a political act, despite the absence of any material evidence permitting its establishment as such. The repressive policies of the MBF take thus a brutal turn, taking the form of the execution of hostages and then of the first deportations. Most importantly, these policies now begin to principally target ideological enemies of the national-socialist regime, presumed guilty of the attacks. The MBF therefore breaks with its traditional practice of taking hostages. Hostages taken in order to be shot in the case of an attack were no longer to be taken from the leaders of the community, but from the “circle of presumed guilty”, that is to say, in practice, principally communist prisoners – without completely ruling out Gaullists – even when no material proof can link them to the attacks. While the number of Jewish communists executed during this first series of executions is certainly marginal in terms of how many were actually executed, it is much less so when we remember that the Jewish population represented less than 1 % of the overall number of people living in France. But more importantly, the proportion becomes massive as of December 1941. From then on, Jewish people are, with communists, publically designated by the MBF as “expiatory” victims of the resistance to the occupiers. The shift that happens from then on, at the same moment that the Nazi genocidal project is taking form, does not signify, however, that the German repression subsequently spared the communists. Indeed, contrary to what is suggested by the communiqués issued by the MBF from late 1941, the majority – that is to say more than 90 % - of Jewish prisoners shot were, like before, close to the communist circles. Between the convoys no. 5 and 6 of Jewish deportations for example, a “retaliation convoy” composed of around 1175 men, mostly communists, departed from Compiegne on the 6th of July 1942 for Auschwitz. Thus, even if the conversion of the policy of repression of the resistance into a radical anti-Semitic policy indeed took place around the end of 1941, the fact remains that it does not dissolve therein. The motivations underlying the choice taken by the MBF, supported by the local entities of the German military administration, are complex and cannot be reduced to simply pragmatic and objective considerations, but neither can they be reduced to simply ideological considerations. If the MBF employed an ideologically targeted terror in occupied France, it was above all because it considered this terror less detrimental to collaboration in a country where the fight against the internal enemy was defined by the same ideological presuppositions as its own, and which were going to be comforted, a posteriori, by the results of the police investigations. Indeed, the MBF knew that it could count on Vichy's support, provided that the German repression targeted principally communists and Jews, sparing the majority of the population as well as the community leaders, whose designation as hostages, as was traditionally the practice, seemed incompatible with the state collaboration chosen by the French government. Thus, the singularity of the Vichy régime in occupied Europe is likely not unrelated to the more ideologically marked direction adopted by the German military apparatus of occupied France in its repressive policies. On the other hand, by counting on the anticommunism and anti-Semitism of the French population, the MBF was doubtless looking to isolate resistance fighters designated as vulgar and cowardly criminals from the rest of the national community. The MBF could therefore hope to frighten potential partisans of the resistance, and convince the French people that the repression only affected a certain minority of individuals, who fit a specific political and racial profile. Whether used simply for political ends, or were the result of a real fear of the threat that the communist and Jewish communities represented for the occupying power, the security-related rhetoric and practices of the military occupation apparatus expressed in any case a virulent anti-Semitism and anticommunism. The vision of the resistance that underlies the often moderate attitude adopted by the MBF in the face of large numbers of hostage executions derives thus from an ideological and racist logic.

The FLN strike force : the specificities of the Algerian war in metropolitan France. The Algerian war was not only fought in the colony but also took place in metropolitan France, especially through the actions of the FLN strike force. These groups, always mentioned in the autobiographies of former militants or in historical accounts but never adequately investigated, have emerged as a blurred social category. This article proposes to follow eight armed groups (a total of 46 individuals) reconstituted with the opening of the archives of Military Justice, of French internal intelligence, and a comprehensive review of a regional newspaper (Dernière Heure Lyonnaise). The members of these groups will then be placed in series and observed within a larger data-base composed of acts of judgment rendered by the Permanent Military Tribunal of Lyons. The spatial framework used is that of the wilaya 3, part of the larger wilaya 7. By wilaya, we mean the regional administrative district of the FLN, the wilaya 7 encompassing the whole of France. The metropolitan wilaya 3 was the largest district internal to the mother country, as it combined the departments of central and east-central France. We will study two separate phases in the lives of the armed FLN militants : the clandestine and imprisoned phases. Each one of these moments forms one of the two parts of this article. Firstly, we intend to follow these groups throughout their arrival in the metropolis, their training, their hierarchy and leaders, and their armed action. Contrary to the official works on the FLN, this part argues that these militants were ordinary men caught up by the war, who aimed, primarily, at controlling the immigrant population, at combating the rival MNA group, and, sporadically, at fighting the French police. Secondly, we will analyse these militants' struggle on the judicial and prison fronts. Indeed, the justice system condemned strike force members very harshly (this specific population received the highest level of death sentences), while denying them the status of combatant for independence, which the prisoners demanded. This article proposes, in conclusion, a new definition of strike force organisations much closer to the reality of these groups.