Part I: ‘Misconduct’ and disunity

Abstract

This first part of the book considers French behaviours under occupation that challenge the narrative of dignified suffering and patriotism. 1 There is a temptation simply to label such behaviours 'collaboration' , as certain historians have done. 2 I believe that this should be avoided. Only very few members of the occupied population used the word in a negative sense, 3 making its use anachronistic-although anachronistic terms can still be useful to historians. Yet the term is too associated in French cultural and historical memory with the Vichy regime, especially with the notion of political or ideological complicity with the occupiers, which was largely absent in the context of the First World War. Of course, underlying ideas related to the notion of 'collaboration' are useful, as are reflections on the grey area of 'accommodation' or more simply 'survival'. 4 The following chapters include certain behaviours that other scholars of the 1914-18 occupation have labelled as 'accommodation' or 'rapprochement' , 5 but which were subject to criticism during the occupation. Occupied life was complex, defying neat categorisation, and unsurprisingly there existed a fluid, murky boundary between patriotism and treason. Nevertheless, I offer up suggestive analytical categories in my study that focuses in particular on the extremes of the spectrum, with which the dominant occupied culture was particularly concerned. Central to this culture was the notion of respectability, involving unwritten but widely accepted social mores combined with patriotic expectations, which dictated what was perceived as correct and incorrect behaviour. It informed French interaction with the thousands of German men living alongside them. Many were aware of this moralpatriotic framework and the potential criticism from compatriots for