Sandra Ott

Good Tongues, Bad Tongues: Denunciation, Rumour and Revenge in the French Basque Country, 1943–1945

This article provides the first ethnographic study of denunciation and rumor during the Gernam Occupation and its aftermath. In one French Basque village, “a good tongues” accused a female shopkeeper of adultery, multiple denunciations and economic collaboration with the enemy. She, in turn, played wtth “public rumour”, a product of human communication and imagination that citizens constantly reshaped as they evaluated and responded to accusations of wrongdoing. By making public, oral denunciations to the Germans, the shopkeeper competed with a female arch rival in the Resistance. Basques had their own traditional means of sanctioning moral treachery in their community. I show how one particular practice, La Jonchée, provided an anonymous, non‐violent alternative to female head‐shaving, carried out by men who wished to punish women for sexual collaboration.

Duplicity, Indulgence and Ambiguity in Franco–German Relations, 1940–1946

This article focuses on the unusual relationships formed by a Nazi officer, his Swiss interpreter and a Basque double agent in southwestern France during the German occupation. The case illustrates the paradoxes and ambiguities entailed in the continuum of collaboration, accommodation and resistance and both strengthens and elucidates many conclusions of recent scholarship on the occupation and liberation. The article also applies anthropological theories about reciprocity, gratitude and hospitality to Franco–German relations and illustrates the ways in which the political was filtered through, if not entirely defined, by the personal. The experiences of the Nazi officer, interpreter and double agent provide an excellent opportunity to delve into the thickets of compromise, uncertainty and ambivalence that so often characterized Franco–German relations.

Denunciations, clemency and conflict resolution in the French Basque Country (1917—1944)

During the interwar years, under Vichy rule and German occupation, French Basques upheld a longstanding right to judge their fellow citizens and to address wrongdoing that threatened stability and order in their conservative, Catholic moral community. In the province of Xiberoa, that dual community-based right underpinned the wish of Xiberoans to manage their own justice and intra-community conflicts, in certain circumstances, without intervention from the state and its representatives. This article examines cases when local holders of civic and moral authority chose, or were forced, to seek legal justice and to resolve conflict through authorities external to their moral community. The small, industrial town of Maule provides a local focus for exploring the management of justice and intra-community conflict by Basque notables, who made strategic use of information about wrongdoing to protect their moral community from internal and external harm, embodied by the communists in their midst.