Contenu du sommaire

Clenched fists and outstretched arms. The contagion of symbols at the time of the Popular Front, Philippe Burrin. The spectacular success of a gesture such as the raised fist, the staging of demonstrations and grandiose celebrations, the massive reappropriation of the national revolutionary tradition : this symbolic and ritual effervescence gives a distinct and virtually unanalyzed flavor to the period 1934-1936. Such an analysis, which enriches our knowledge of the history of the Popular Front and French anti-fascism, requires a preliminary study of the Marxist attitude toward political symbolism to which the two French working-class parties adhered. It is also necessary to take a look at Germany, in a way the experimental laboratory for the phenomenon. Thus in perspective, the symbolic tide which carried away the French left becomes intelligible and meaningful.

Was Vichy fascist ?, Alain-Gérard Slama. In order to understand the Vichy regime, one must focus on what differentiates it from all the other authoritarian experiments and makes it an element of the political originating in the Revolution and the Empire. This makes it possible to determine to what extent the components of the Petain myth are elements traditional in French culture : the soldier, the peasant and the school teacher. And how the weight of cultural references favored the pluralism of political debate within the regime and led its political discourse toward continuity. Culture more than conjuncture thus probably saved Petain's France from the fascist epidemic.

Was Vichy libéral ? The meaning of the Flandin intermezzo, Olivier Wieviorka. Did Pierre-Etienne Flandin, Vichy's Foreign Affairs minister from 13 December 1940 to 10 February 1941, after the dismissal of Laval and the arrival of Darlan, have the time and the desire to deal a liberal card ? Could the regime resist the Germans after the Montoire meeting ? Archives in hand, the author concludes on these issues hotly debated by historians, from R. Paxton to M. Cointet, that a " double game " was impossible and points out that Flandin did not try to transform the nature of a State of which he expected only that it would save his personal strategy.

The history of the Resistance, François Bédarida. In spite of ample historiography, the history of European resistance to fascism remains an open field. Historians are still discussing the definition of the phenomenon. Neither the question of the unity or the diversity of the movement throughout Europe, nor the problem of the extent of the population's participation, nor the reality of the link between the clandestine oppositions and the political-strategic context of the global conduct of the war are settled. The study of the various ways of resisting, of the shared characteristics and the national specificities should make it possible to correct many preconceptions.

German resistance to the Nazi regime. Historiography in the Federal Republic of Germany, Klaus-Jùrgen Millier. Four phases appear in the historiography of German resistance to Nazism. At the end of the 1940s it was urgent to attest the reality of this resistance. During the cold war, its memory served to legitimate and consolidate the rebirth of West Germany, but at the expense of exclusions, concerning e.g. the communist resistance. During the 1960s, a new generation of historians attempted to debank an overly heroic image. Lastly, in the 1970s and 1980s, research developed in many directions, trying to understand not only the motivations of some of the resistants (such as those of 20 July, 1944), but the whole phenomenon including its effects within the German population.