Mobilising Mountains in Vichy France

Abstract

On 25 October 1941 Marc Augier addressed a gathering of the ‘Jeunesse de l’Europe Nouvelle’, the youth section of the Groupe Collaboration. Augier had been involved with secular youth-hostelling groups in interwar France and would go on to become political officer of the French Charlemagne division of Waffen-SS. But in his October 1941 speech he focused on his recent ascent of Mont Blanc. Upon reaching the summit (the most tranquil place in Europe) he felt liberated from the mundane daily experiences of wartime France. Yet despite this welcome respite, Augier was not tempted to stay at this secluded spot. After all, it was not possible for an individual to remain alone on the summit. The mountain was too dangerous, too demanding and too difficult an environment in which to survive. This was one of the lessons Augier drew from the mountain; ‘man [sic] is not made for solitude, the mountain tells him to live communally’ (la montagne lui fixe la règle commune). The ‘solitary alpinist’ resembled the nineteenth century individualism of ‘bourgeois and capitalist Europe’ that had superseded ‘the rules of the community’. This misguided individualism had led to war in 1914, the kind of war that would only cease to exist once ‘men’ learnt to live by the ‘law of the [climbing] rope’. The mountain also taught Augier two other important lessons.KeywordsMountain EnvironmentNatural AllyMountain ClimatePatriotic SentimentJewish RefugeeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.