France and Collaboration

As an addition to this post on wartime France, Clive Davis directs one to this Max Hastings op-ed from a couple of years ago that makes similar points:

Hearing a recent conversation about collaboration, I made myself unpopular by suggesting that, if Britain had succumbed to Nazi rule, our own people would have behaved pretty much as the French did. Anthony Eden is seldom quoted with respect these days. Yet the former foreign secretary made an impressive contribution to Marcel Ophüls’ great film on wartime France, Le Chagrin et la Pitié. He said, in impeccable French: “It would be impertinent for any country that has never suffered occupation to pass judgment on one that did.” Here was wisdom. It is extraordinarily difficult to resist tyranny ruthlessly enforced, especially in a densely populated country with little wilderness. In order to eat and provide for one’s family, it is necessary to earn money.