Simon Kitson

Police and Politics in Marseille, 1936-1945

This article deals with the relationship between the police and national and local politics in France during the mid-1930s. A new left-wing coalition, the Popular Front, had come to power to try to ward off a perceived fascist threat. This threat was felt very keenly in France because most of the surrounding countries were falling under far right control and France had had its own extreme-right demonstrations in 1934. It was important for the new coalition to be able to dispose of a reliable police force. In Marseille, the police was politically divided particularly between those who considered themselves apolitical and the supporters of the ‘fascist’ Sabiani and the socialist Tasso. The battle-lines were drawn partly on ideological lines but essentially around clientelistic considerations. Undoubtedly the socialists dominated the local force and the Popular Front was thus welcomed by the police rank and file, but not without some of their hopes being frustrated.

12. A New Police for a New France

The poor image of the Police in provincial France at the Liberation was partly derived from traditional hostility to these institutions. On the one hand there was a widely held belief that the Police in general were corrupt and self-interested. It is significant that Resistance documents concerning Police involvement with their organisations frequently showed scepticism as to the honesty of motives behind Police Resistance. On the other hand, hostility existed to the way in which the State had traditionally used its Police force as an instrument of political oppression. The general euphoria surrounding the Liberation, encouraged the belief that it was possible to start afresh and to establish services genuinely preoccupied with the interests of the public. The project for these Milices was launched from Moscow in August 1943, by the leader of the French Communist Party, Maurice Thorez.Keywords: France; hostility; Liberation; Police; scepticism; Vichy

1. From Hope to Disappointment

Public order issues were at the very heart of the foundation of the Popular Front, a political alliance of Socialists, Radicals, Communists, trade unions and civil rights groups. The need for a defensive alliance of left-wing forces had become apparent in reaction to the bloody evening of 6 February 1934: one of those tumultuous riots with which Parisian history is littered. Despite some disappointments experienced with regard to the central government, Tassos support amongst Police officers remained solid throughout the Popular Front. Beyond immigration, another difficulty for the Police of the mid-1930s was that the general political climate on the international, national and local stage was so highly charged. Popular Front policy was not the only reason that this defence was successfully assured but the governments efforts almost certainly helped, as did the Police in uncovering and undermining the extreme-right Cagoule conspiracy.Keywords: central government; Marseille; Police; Popular Front policy; Public order issues

10. New Rivals

Police services generally like to have a monopoly on policing. So what effect would the Occupation of Marseille have on the Police? The arrival of the Germans in the Southern zone had brought with it new rivals in the Police domain. Links between the Police and extreme right-wing para-Police organisations could also have a more institutionalised nature. The Section des Affaires Politiques (SAP), established within the framework of the Police de Surete in June 1942, was a prime example of such links between Police and Milice. The vast majority of Police officers involved in parallel Police movements had left or been expelled from the force before joining the parallel organisation. Parallel Police organisations could provide opportunities to make use of techniques and information gathered during a Police career, whilst ensuring the ex-Police officer immunity from the STO and poverty.Keywords: Marseille; Milice; policing; poverty; rivals; Southern zone

4. Policing Opposition

Memories of the assassination of Alexander I of Yugoslavia and French foreign Minister Louis Barthou on the Canebiere thoroughfare in October 1934 were fresh enough for the authorities to assure that no risks were taken this time. Police round-ups followed. It has been estimated that some 20,000 individuals were imprisoned not only in the regular jails but also in four boats, four barracks and three cinemas specially commissioned for the purpose, living off a diet of stale bread and uncooked meat whilst the Head of State sat down to a seven course lunch. Eyewitness accounts of these Police activities are provided by Varian Fry, Daniel Benedite and Jean Gemahling of the Emergency Rescue Committee, an American organisation which established itself in the city in 1940 to help in the emigration of refugees.Keywords: Emergency Rescue Committee; France; hostility; Policing Opposition; Vichy

2. Marseille Chicago

Marseille children formed gangs from their early years and engaged in street-fights with rivals from neighbouring districts. But it was more usual to link organised crime with the citys high immigration levels. Most immigrants had nothing to do with gangsterism, indeed many were victims of it, but in any sociological profile of Marseilles gangsters the Corsican community would undoubtedly be very well represented. In her work on immigration to the city Marie-Francoise Attard-Maraninchi stresses the overlapping of Corsican and gangster culture: both revolved around an exaggerated sense of personal honour, attachment to a clan, mutual solidarity and the respect of the law of silence. Three groups of gangsters are particularly associated with the Marseille of the 1930s and 1940s. The Carbone-Spirito clan held considerable influence over Marseilles underworld from the late-1920s, recruiting widely and putting their fingers into a number of pies.Keywords: Corsican community; crime; France; gangsterism; Marseille; mutual solidarity

9. The New Slave Trade

Germany had initially focused on recruiting volunteer labour from France. They promised such workers generous wages and good working conditions and accommodation. But these attempts to attract volunteers were never very successful. Up until the summer of 1942 they had managed to recruit a total of around 150,000 French volunteer workers, although there were never more than around 75,000 in Germany at any one time and it was only in June of that year that Vichy allowed the Germans to recruit volunteers in the unoccupied zone when recruitment bureaux were set up in Lyon, Marseille and Toulouse. Beyond the genuine volunteers, there was a second category comprising those who, having received their call-up, felt constrained to report for the labour draft without any direct Police intervention. They felt obliged by the threats which had accompanied the written call-ups received through the post.Keywords: France; Germany; labour; Police; Slave Trade; Vichy

5. Anti-Semitic Policing

Central to Vichys concerns in the area of anti-Semitic policing was the desire to maintain sovereignty. This meant on one level making sure that it was foreign Jews who were deported instead of French ones. Sacrificing foreign Jews from the southern zone was meant to save French ones in the north where the Germans were threatening to carry out anti-Semitic operations. Anti-Semitic persecution was facilitated by the slowness of public opinion to condemn it. Although Police reports noted in October 1940 a degree of sympathy towards Jews as a reaction against Vichys anti-Jewish statutes, this was short-lived and initial reaction to foreign Jews was mostly defined by indifference or hostility. Despite the existence of this current of barefaced anti-Semitism in the Police it would be mistaken to depict it as representative of the attitudes of the totality of officers.Keywords: anti-semitic policing; France; hostility; Marseille; Vichy

Arresting Nazi spies in Vichy France (1940–42)

This article deals with the controversial and neglected topic of the anti‐German aspect of counter‐espionage in wartime France. The Vichy government initially tolerated the arrest of Nazi agents as a way of securing its sovereignty over the ‘unoccupied’ parts of France or paradoxically of reinforcing collaboration by offering arrested spies as a bargaining counter in negotiations with the Nazis. Rapidly it began to back‐track, undermining its secret services in this domain, as the desire to avoid diplomatic incidents weakened its resolve. Members of the secret services themselves took the dangerous decision to continue to see the Germans as an enemy power, although this attitude was never entirely devoid of ambiguity.

Rescuing anti‐Nazis from Occupied France

Fry, V., Surrender on Demand (Johnson Books, Colorado, 1997), 272 pp.,