Monasteries, Miliciens, War Criminals: Vichy France/Quebec, 1940-50

Abstract

French Canadians' shock and dismay at the French defeat in 1940 soon gave way, at least in some Quebec circles, to hope, when it appeared that Marshal Petain might represent a very different France a country changed more radically in a few months after June 1940 than at any other time in its history since 1789.' Quebec elites were well-prepared for Petainism. Educated by religious orders in classical colleges, steeped in that right-wing French thought and literature of the Right which flourished in the interwar period,2 they had brought out their own Action Francaise. Some of the younger intellectuals had ties with the Parisian 'non-conformist' groups like Ordre Nouveau and Esprit which would provide the visionaries for Petain's Youth Revolution. A few others even knew the right-wing extremists of the French cagoule conspiracy who would form Petain's inner circle.3 Some French intellectuals or mystics moulded by Barres, by the Action Francaise, or by Benedictine monasticism had even left corrupted France for a new life among the Quebecois who represented for them the stolid retro-medievals which the Vichy regime's New Middle Ages might nurture in a post-Republican France.4 There was enthusiasm for Petain's National Revolution, even a zealous Petainism, in Quebec, even without the occupation.5 When de Gaulle sent Thierry d'Argenlieu to Quebec City to appeal for