Sunday, April 16, 2017
Must not tell the truth about WWII
The WWII government of France at Vichy was an unelected government of French politicians installed by the Nazis. Marine Le Pen is perfectly correct to say that they did not represent France. But national guilt must be proclaimed apparently
Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen’s rivals have slammed her for comments on the deportation of Jews from France during World War II.
During a television interview on Sunday a reporter asked her about the country’s previous official apology for wartime events including the rounding up of Jews who were held in a Paris cycling stadium, Vel d’Hiv, before being transported to Nazi concentration camps.
Le Pen replied that “France” was not responsible of the notorious event. “It was the responsibility of those who were running the country.”
“For years, France has been mistreated in people’s minds,” she said. “ I want our children to be proud of being French again because we have taught them a lot of reasons to criticize their country. They only see its darkest historical aspects.”
The French state at the time was administered by the collaborationist Vichy regime under Marshal Philippe Pétain, while the “Free French” government-in-exile, based in London, was led by Gen. Charles de Gaulle.
Shortly after her broadcast comments, Le Pen’s headquarters issued a press release in which she said that, “In my view, during occupation the Vichy regime did not represent France. France and the Republic were in London.”
But the clarification did not stop the criticism, from Jewish groups and presidential rivals.
The Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions denounced what it called revisionist remarks that unveiled the true face of the National Front.
It recalled that the Vel d’Hiv roundup was organized by René Bousquet, chief of the Vichy Police, on July 16-17, 1942, representing the French state as it then was.
Under orders from the Nazis, 4,500 French police and “gendarmes” arrested around 13,000 Jews in Paris and the region, including 4,000 children, to be sent to concentration camps.
The Union of French Jewish Students also strongly condemned Le Pen’s comments.
Independent presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, Le Pen’s closest main opponent according to polls for the first round of voting (23 percent to her 24 percent), described her remarks as “a heavy political and historical error.”
“The truth is that the Vel d’Hiv was a crime committed by the French state,” said the candidate of the center-right Republicans, François Fillon, running third in the first-round polls.
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5 comments:
It is ironic that LePen and apparently our own host think that those who actively collaborated with the Germans, rounded up Jews, and worked on behalf of the Nazis are not even partially responsible for what happened.
Next thing you know, they'll be telling us that France was outgunned at the beginning of the war.
Revisionist history can, and does, go both ways.
Certainly France can not be proud of surrendering so quickly to the Germans in WWII, and even leaving the British troops (that had come over to help them) stranded on the beaches of Normandy, and suffering a great loss of men and equipment under the relentless onslaught from the Germans, though miraculously ships and boats of all kinds managed to cross the English Channel to rescue a lot of men.
People today have little knowledge or understanding of what happened during the Nazi reign of terror.
The sight of the weeping frenchman watching nazis marching through paris
BoP,
Knowledge is a wonderful thing. You should try it sometime.
There were only three carriers in the Pacific at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Lexington was ferrying planes to Midway when the attack occurred. The Saratoga was in dry dock on the West Coast as part of an upgrade that had been planned for years. The Enterprise was returning from ferrying planes to wake and was scheduled to be at Pearl Harbor on Dec 6 but a storm and refueling of her escorts delayed her return. The rest of the carriers were in the Atlantic where it was thought that the Germans were a greater threat.
The carriers were not the main target of the Japanese - Pearl Harbor as a forward operating base and supply to the Pacific was.
As for Kimmel (not Kimmer you moron) and Short, despite being warned and to prepare Pearl for an attack, did much. Short and Kimmel failed to take basic steps such as using patrols to guard against an air attack. They failed to coordinate any type of liaison between the two services. Kimmer was a member of the "Big Gun Club" and never thought an attack from air would matter, so the anchorage was woefully unprepared for attacks from the air and or torpedoes. Short took virtually no preparations to defend Hawaii from a land invasion. Their lack of preparedness warranted their removal. If nothing else because the people over them and just as importantly, the people under them had lost confidence in them.
The real question is why MacArthur was allowed to remain in command when his preparations in the Philippines was even worse.
As for what FDR knew, the US had a good inkling that the Japanese were preparing for an attack, but where that attack was to take place was not known.
History is more than your ridiculous conspiracy theories.
There is no conspiracy theory that can be supported by facts.
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