Contenu du sommaire : Seconde Guerre mondiale : réactions et résistances

Deux défenseurs de l'indépendance de la Finlande : Alexandre Varenne et Jacques Bardoux (décembre 1939 - mars 1940)Alexandre Varenne, executive editor of La Montagne and a leader of the Socialist Party, is leader of the Left in Auvergne. He is the target of the traditional Right led by Jacques Bardoux, one of the top experts in France on the subject of Great Britain. Their rivalry during the First Finnish War is total. Bardoux is an inveterate enemy of the USSR, while Varenne would treat it tactfully, mindful of the danger from Nazi Germany. Both of them nevertheless wish to preserve Finnish independence and denounce the lack of resolve of the Daladier government.

The Youth Camps, created in July 1940, are in keeping with the project of reforming French youth undertaken by the Vichy Government. These young people, conscripted for eight months, receive a moral training centred on group discipline, as well as physical training based on living in the open air, working on the land and physical education. The body therefore plays a predominant part in the Camps, so that specific initiatives for physical education and sport are introduced. Hence the creation of the camps as a centre of physical education and as agathering of young sportsmen into a group. The purpose is to provide physical therapy to people with physical deficiency.

La hiérarchie catholique et les principes de la révolution nationale
Like a new Solon, Marshal Pétain wanted to lay the foundations of the « État français » on new principles. These were taken from the positivism interpreted by the club « Le Redressement français », created by the French technocrat Ernest Mercier. The Head of State asked the bishops' advice about the « Principles of the Community ». Mgr Chollet wrote a criticism of this text on January 14-21, 1941. He criticised the positivism which ignored the Individual on behalf of Society. He brought into relief the risk of contamination by Nazi ideology. On the other hand, he was wrong to think that the positivism of the « Principles of the Community » was inspired by Charles Maurras and that the Marshal did not agree with the ideas of this text. By common consent, the Holy See and the French bishops worked in vain to bring the human person into consideration.

L'institut français d'Athènes pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale
In the dark period of the occupation of Greece by the of Axis forces, the French Institute of Athens was the only non-German and non-Italian institution that did not interrupt its activities. The institute, a bulwark of French cultural growth during the decade of the 1930s, was changed to a shelter of intellectual resistance of Greek youth. A series of educational activities, publications and speeches gave the Athenians a special cultural escape. Besides, the relations that the members of the institute developed with the forces of the Greek and French resistance allowed France to maintain her positive image in Greece.

Itinéraire du Général Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach (1888-1976) : un officier allemand face aux totalitarismesA member of one of Prussia's oldest and proudest military families, General Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach was torn between his oath of loyalty and his concern for the welfare of Germany ; he chose the latter. A prisoner after Stalingrad, he decided to head the BDO, a League of German officers under Soviet sponsorship, in an attempt to depose Hitler and replace the Nazis by a lawful government. On April 26, 1944, Hitler sentenced the « traitor general » to death in absentia. On July 8, 1950, Seydlitz was convicted on trumped-up charges as a war criminal. Stalin commuted the death sentence to 25 years' imprisonment. Back home in 1955, he found himself anathema, even though he had proved his opposition both to Nazism and Stalinism. He was rehabilitated in 1995 but his unorthodox story still raises polemics.

Les italiens dans la M.O.I et les FTP-MOI à Lyon et Grenoble
In spite of the great number of Italians present in Rhône-Alpes just before the outbreak of the Second World War, their organisation by the MOI (Main-d'œuvre immigrée), the structure set up by the French communist party to enable foreign communist in France to work together, barely existed in the region. Already integrated into the French society, many of them were active members of the French communist party, others received their instructions directly from leading members of the Italian communist party who had taken refuge in France. This fact explains why, at the very beginning, the military organisation of the FTP-MOI (Francs-tireurs et partisans de la Main-d'œuvre immigrée) was mainly composed of fighters from the Jewish section of the MOI, those from the Paris aera who had taked refuge in Lyon or Grenoble. This being said, some Italians – admittedly only a few took part from the start and, as the months passed, their number increased until it reached at the Liberation 20 % or even 40 % – depending on the place – of the total of the FTP-MOI fighters in the Rhône-Alpes region.

Les photographes de Mauthausen : aspects nouveaux d'une affaire célèbre. The story of the photographs taken by the SS in the Mauthausen concentration camp, and saved by Spanish prisoners, is now well known. The role of the SS photographers and of their prisoner-assistants is much less so. Could an SS photographer in a concentration camp remain a human being ? It is a Spanish prisoner working under him who makes the claim. But can the word of such a prisoner be accepted, especially when he accuses one of his fellow-prisoners (acclaimed a national hero in Spain) of having collaborated with the SS and of having brutalized another prisoner ? These are two questions that the present article seeks to resolve.

La puissance militaire soviétique vue par les attachés militaires français à Moscou (1945-1953)After the Second World War, the USSR turned out to be the worst enemy of the West and, as such, gradually replaced Germany. The USSR was a leading military power. Moreover, it was led by an ideocracy that considered itself engaged in a deadly and constant struggle against the capitalist states. In this article, we focus on the way the French military attachés in the USSR judged the Soviet war establishment and the danger it could represent for the West. What were the strengths and weaknesses of the Soviet war potential ? In the event of war, what could have been the USSR's possibilities of military action against Europe and the United States ? Did the Soviet military forces have an offensive or a defensive orientation ?

Mai 68 et la réconciliation franco-américaine. The United States carefully observed the French demonstrations and strikes of May-June 1968. The White House received a vast amount of documents reporting and assessing the events. The American archives thus allow us to study the effects of May 68 on the stormy relationship between the Johnson administration and De Gaulle's France. After years of deep mistrust, did the French crisis hasten the pace of reconciliation ?