The Ordre Des Medecins and the Jews in Vichy France, 1940-1944

This paper examines the way in which the Jewish question washandled by the Ordre des Médecins, a representative institutionfor the medical profession created by the Vichy government.It discusses the historiography of Vichy anti-Semitism generallyand goes on to analyze the background of anti-Semitism in theFrench medical profession in the 1930s, comparing it with anti-Semitismin other professions such as Law. The paper then discusses thereactions of the Ordre des Médecins and its governingbody, the Conseil Supérieur, to the Vichy anti-Semiticlegislation which affected the profession and compares its brandof anti-Semitism with the official Vichy policy. It focuseson the unequal battle between the Conseil Supérieur,whose members were typically traditional nationalistic and protectionistanti-Semites, and the Vichy government, where quasi-racial anti-Semitismwas official policy. It explains the inevitable defeat of theConseil Supérieur.     

'Very Peculiar Circumstances': Walter Runciman and the National Government, 1931-3

Walter Runciman's role in the crisis of 1931 and its aftermathis not as well known as those of his Liberal contemporaries,Samuel and Simon. It was, however, at least as important indetermining the outcome. Runciman was not a member of the firstNational Cabinet of August 1931, but he reluctantly acceptedthe Board of Trade, on flattering terms, in November. Highlyregarded by MacDonald, he developed an effective working andpersonal relationship with Neville Chamberlain, and togetherthey shaped the government's tariff policy. It was a compromisethat ensured the long-term survival of the National Governmentand defined the fiscal policy that would replace free trade.Runciman remained convinced throughout his years in office thathe was remaining true to Liberal principles—using tariffbargaining to reduce the general level of tariffs—andthat the national crisis and the changing economic climate justifiedhis compromise with the Conservatives. ¹ I am grateful to my colleagues, Professor Bill Luckin andDr Gaynor Johnson, and to Dr David Dutton, for their commentswhile this article was being written. The quotation in the titleis from Lord Shuttleworth to Runciman, 18 November 1935, RuncimanPapers, Robinson Library, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.WR221     

Contesting France: French informants and American intelligence in the dawning Cold War

By integrating French archives and untapped US intelligence records, this article uncovers a debate within US government circles about the accuracy of the entrenched image of France at the onset of the Cold War as decadent and teetering toward revolution. In exchanges with the White House, State Department and military, right-leaning French sources bolstered this view. French contacts in the Resistance meanwhile shaped Office of Strategic Services analysis that France was a strong, worthy ally. France became a contested idea with warring factions in both capitals seeking to influence US policy – with repercussions for Franco-American relations for decades to come.     

Producing citizens, reproducing the "French race": immigration, demography, and pronatalism in early twentieth-century France

This essay examines how, in the context of depopulation and mass immigration, members of the French pronatalist movement advanced a policy favouring immigrants from Italy, Spain, and Poland. Because the 'demographic crisis' created a shortage of citizens as well as workers, pronatalists held that foreign workers must also be assimilable, and able to produce French offspring. While the racial difference of colonial subjects was deemed immutable, pronatalists called for the immigration of white foreigners whose less 'modern' condition promoted fecundity, traditionalism, and gender dimorphism. Evidence is drawn from demographic studies, the press of France's largest pronatalist movement, and a pronatalist advisory committee created by the Ministry of Health in 1920.     

Stirring Resistance from Moscow: The German Communists of Czechoslovakia and Wireless Propaganda in the Sudetenland, 1941-1945

This is a study of the radio propaganda campaign targeted atthe Sudetenland from the USSR from November 1941 to May 1945.Under the supervision of the Czechoslovak communist party andthe Comintern, the broadcasts were composed and conducted bySudeten German communists stationed first in Ufa and then inMoscow. At first, on the basis of limited information, theystrove simply to divide Sudeten Germans at home from the Nazirégime. But from May 1942 they stepped up their appealfor active resistance alongside that of their Czech ‘brothers’in the Protectorate. Through 1943 the appeal remained positive,assuring all German anti-fascists that they would be secureand treated equally in a future Czechoslovak state. By 1944,however, the message subtly altered in tune with Moscow's decisionto expel most Sudeten Germans. The broadcasts failed to spellthis out, but tried to warn their listeners of what might happenif they did not resist. In reality, though many in the Sudetenlandwere disillusioned with Nazism, the level of active resistanceseems to have been small and the broadcasts probably had a minimaleffect. Nevertheless, they alarmed the Nazi authorities andsome of the propaganda arguments certainly matched the growinganxieties of many Sudeten Germans. By 1944 the Sudeten communistbroadcasters themselves were divided over what tone to adopt.Some still felt a certain Sudeten allegiance and vainly resisteda policy line based on presumed Sudeten ‘collective guilt’.The majority bowed before the official, more critical line,accepting that most Sudeten Germans would be expelled afterthe war. The article seeks for the first time to probe the mindsetof Sudeten German communists, and to set this alongside thatof their target audience in the wartime Sudetenland.     

Prelude to the Popular Front: The Communist Party in California, 1931-35

The opening of some Russian archives to research by Western historians has permitted new understandings of local Communist parties during the 1920s and 1930s. At the same time, these new sources have intensified historiographical debates over the degree of autonomy within the Communist party of the United States (CPUSA). Historians have long pointed to California in the early 1930s as an example of local autonomy, but the new information permits a more detailed understanding both of the extent of that local autonomy and of relations among local CPUSA leaders, the national party office in New York City, and the Comintern in Moscow. This paper explores the CP's participation in events in California-primarily the coastwise maritime strike, the San Francisco general strike, and the state elections of 1934-along with the internal decision-making processes of the CP at various levels through the lens provided by the newly available Comintern archives as well as other collections.     

Imperial Identity in Colonial Minds: Harold Moody and the League of Coloured Peoples, 1931-50

This article examines how the League of Coloured Peoples, foundedin London in 1931 by the Jamaican Harold Moody, used its versionof a British identity to seek equal rights for Britons of colour.I argue that by invoking an imperial British identity that drewon widely accepted elements of Britishness, namely respectabilityand imperial pride, the League gained support from black colonialsand white English people in its fight for equality. This wastrue despite the fact that a major element of the League's conceptionof British identity, racial equality, challenged the dominantidea that ‘true’ Britons were, by definition, white.The article focuses on the workings of the organization's ideologyin the context of two news-making issues: the campaign to restoreBritish citizenship to ‘coloured’ seamen in Cardiffin 1936, and the parliamentary and judicial reaction to discriminationby London's Imperial Hotel against League member Learie Constantinein 1943. The story it tells indicates that British identitieswere claimed and manipulated not only by natives of the BritishIsles, but also by colonial peoples. It further suggests thatunder the conditions of empire colonial peoples could simultaneouslyidentify with the imperial power and their (potentially national)home colony.     

Los Angeles Pentecostals: The Dislocation of a People and the Birth of a Movement

By examining the geographical, economic, religious, and social changes experienced by those who became Pentecostals, and by comparing the religious and cultural backgrounds of native and migrant Angelinos in the 1920s and 1930s with the Pentecostal message, this article demonstrates that several factors contributed to the receptivity of those who lived in the Los Angeles region. First, a deep sense of dislocation predisposed a number of white Angelinos to religious realignment. Next, African Americans were just emerging from one of the most trying times in their long history of suffering, and that suffering had led to millennial expectations that the Pentecostal movement seemed to presage. Then, the Pentecostal message influenced the direction of that realignment by appealing both to those expectations and to other specific cultural characteristics common to many Angelinos. Finally, the article shows that the Pentecostal experience provided a sense of empowerment that some in the movement found transformative.