Contenu du sommaire : La « zone réservée » des Allemands en France sous l'Occupation

While the history of the French “Exode” of May-June 1940 is nowadays rather well studied, the preventive civil evacuation concerning the three border departments of Haut-Rhin, Bas-Rhin and Moselle in September 1939 has received much less attention. Based on a joint Franco-German research programme, the article highlights the interrelations between the refugee policy of the French Third Republic, the German invasion and the territorial reorganisation of France after the Armistice. It recalls the historical backgrounds, the situational context and the preconditions for the creation of the “Forbidden Zone” or “Reserved Zone”, emphasising the links between population movements and the territorial fragmentation of France under German occupation.

June 1940: the first German units invaded Besançon, a city of 60 000 inhabitants, on the border of Switzerland and the Reich. From there, the city was ruled by the German authorities, and belonged to a restricted area planned to become a part of the Reich territory. Worries alongside changeable territorial laws marked the daily routine of the population.

In June 1940, the German occupation troops settled in a large part of French territory in which an area with a special status is defined: the area “prohibited or reserved”. The Franche-Comté is almost entirely part of it. The daily life of populations and schools is quickly turned upside down. Both adults and students must cope with the situation and live to the rhythm of curfews, shortages, requisitions, propaganda, censorship, arrests… They had to rethink their daily lives and to continue the educational mission by constantly adapting to the threatening presence of the occupier near and within the schools.

How did Nazi Germany exploit agriculture in the “Forbidden Zone”? The occupation authorities profited from agricultural production in a specific way, through the actions of the Ostland company. This state-owned firm was an important part of the agricultural occupation policy, as it directly managed French farms in the area. On 170,000 hectares of farmland, it placed German specialists at the head of some 370 large farms, where so-called “modern” methods were applied. But its activity also manifested itself in the implementation of a distinctly National-Socialist management of the workforce, based on a hierarchy of categories of race and gender.

This article suggests to analyse the Jewish persecution within the particular regional framework which the “Reserved Zone” embodies. Opting for a decidedly microhistoric approach, the study deals with the issue of the calendar, which reveals an alignment following the one set up in the occupied zone, from the point of view of the torturers, should they be executives or subordinates; it also stresses the year 1944 « paradox ». The specific treatment reserved to the Jews in the zone is also dealt with through some particular locations: The camps in Ecouvres, Vittel and Mazures. The author deals also with the issue of the escape attempts towards Switzerland, from the point of view of the victims, allowing thus an insight into all the persecution process dimensions pertaining to that specific regional configuration.

This paper is the first step of a comparative group study on egodocuments during times of conflict and political constraint. Three witnesses confide in their personal notebooks, in form of collages including newspaper cuttings. Three young diarists, three living environments in the “Reserved Zone” (1940-1942): a mother (born in 1910) waiting for her husband to return, a peasant woman (b. in 1923), and a watchmaker in training (b. in 1927) belonging to a Resistance group. We can observe first of all the authors' self-restraint, then their thoroughness and, finally, their patriotic feelings. They all deal primarily with their everyday lives' needs, hoping for the end of the German occupation. Does their meticulousness in writing help reassure them against the inherently uncertain context?

The “Reserved Zone” is rarely mentioned, even invisible. This phenomenon is paradoxical because it relates to a situation experienced by a large proportion of the Francs-Comtois between 1940 and 1944 and questions the way in which the museum of Resistance and Deportation of Besançon conserves heritage and participates in the writing of history. With more than 1,600 donors, a true galaxy of personal journeys forms the basis of the collections. Among them, because they are intimately linked to family memory, photographs remain difficult to collect, as they are perceived as irrelevant outside the circle of relatives. Undoubtedly, however, they help us document the reserved area, which in many ways remains to be discovered.

The narrative of the 1000 aerial victories of French Armée de l'Air in May-June 1940 was born in July 1940 in the context of the English attack on Mers-el-Kébir. Despite the denials, this myth has been the subject of stubborn beliefs until now because it reinforces a positive identity for the Armée de l'Air and its elite: fighter pilots. This study proposes to retrace how the myth originated and imposed itself, then, in order to try to understand the context and the reasons for historical falsification and finally to analyze the consequences, because to deny failure is also risking to reproduce it.