Research Catalog

Otto Abetz and his Paris acolytes : French writers who flirted with fascism, 1930-1945

Title
Otto Abetz and his Paris acolytes : French writers who flirted with fascism, 1930-1945 / Martin Mauthner.
Author
Mauthner, Martin
Publication
  • Brighton : Sussex Academic Press, 2016.
  • ©2016

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TextUse in library JFE 16-7980Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description
xi, 369 pages, 4 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations; 24 cm
Summary
"Before Hitler comes to power Otto Abetz is a left-wing Francophile teacher in provincial Germany, mobilizing young French and German idealists to work together for peace through Franco-German reconciliation and a united Europe. Abetz marries a French girl but after 1933 succumbs to the Nazi sirens. Ribbentrop recruits him as his expert on France, tasking him with soothing the nervous French, as Hitler turns Germany into a war machine. Abetz builds up a network of opinion-moulding French men and women who admire the Nazis and detest the Bolsheviks, and encourages them to use their pens to highlight Hitler's triumphs. In 1939 France expels Abetz as a Nazi agent. The following year he returns in triumph with the German army as Hitler appoints him as his ambassador in Paris. During the war Abetz (apart from 'securing' works of art and playing a role in the deportation of Jews) manoeuvres three of his French publicist friends--Jean Luchaire, Fernand de Brinon, Drieu la Rochelle--into key positions, from where they can laud Nazi achievements and denigrate the Resistance. A prime question the author addresses is why these writers, and two others, Jules Romains and Bertrand de Jouvenel--all of whom had close Jewish family connections--supported the Nazi ideology. At the war's end Drieu commits suicide, while Luchaire and Brinon are tried and executed as traitors. Abetz, charged with war crimes, pleads that he has saved France from being 'Polonized', but a French court finds him guilty and he is imprisoned. Released early, he dies in a mysterious car crash--a saboteur being suspected of having tampered with the steering"--
Subjects
Genre/Form
  • Biography.
  • History.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (pages 332-338) and index.
Call Number
JFE 16-7980
ISBN
  • 9781845197841
  • 1845197844
  • 1782842977 (electronic bk.)
  • 9781782842972 (electronic bk.)
LCCN
2015041031
OCLC
936006192
Author
Mauthner, Martin, author.
Title
Otto Abetz and his Paris acolytes : French writers who flirted with fascism, 1930-1945 / Martin Mauthner.
Publisher
Brighton : Sussex Academic Press, 2016.
Copyright Date
©2016
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 332-338) and index.
Chronological Term
1900-1999
Research Call Number
JFE 16-7980
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