About the Book
In post-liberation France, the French courts judged the cases of more than one hundred thousand people accused of aiding and abetting the enemy during the Second World War. In this fascinating book, Sandra Ott uncovers the hidden history of collaboration in the Pyrenean borderlands of the Basques and the Béarnais in southwestern France through nine stories of human folly, uncertainty, ambiguity, ambivalence, desire, vengeance, duplicity, greed, self-interest, opportunism and betrayal. Covering both the occupation and liberation periods, she reveals how the book's characters became involved with the occupiers for a variety of reasons, ranging from a desire to settle scores and to gain access to power, money and material rewards, to love, friendship, fear and desperation. These wartime lives and subsequent postwar reckonings provide us with a new lens through which to understand human behavior under the difficult conditions of occupation, and the subsequent search for retribution and justice.
Table of Contents:
Introduction; Part I. The Context: 1. Pyrenean borderlands: setting and cultures; 2. World wars, civil war, and German occupation; 3. Violence and the process of liberation; 4. The purge, the judiciary, and the court of justice; Part II. The Narratives and the Trials: 5. A black market bicycle vendor; 6. A teenaged informer and the tragedy of Portet; 7. A pro-German Basque farmer; 8. The changing face of the enemy; 9. A town hall secretary and a Vichy police commissioner; 10. Friendship with a Nazi officer; 11. A Basque double agent and a Nazi officer; 12. A teenaged volunteer in the Waffen-SS; 13. Sex, vengeance, and duplicity: the strange case of Dr Vérité; Part III. Conclusions.
About the Author :
Sandra Ott is an Oxford-educated anthropologist, and she has done research in the Basque Country for forty years. Speaking Basque, French and Spanish, she acquired minor fame among artisan cheese-makers for the chapter on 'The cheese analogy of conception' in her first book The Circle of Mountains: A Basque Shepherding Community (1981). Other works include the ethnographic film The Basques of Santazi with Granada Television for 'Disappearing Worlds', and War, Judgment and Memory in the Basque Borderlands, 1914–1945 (2008).
Review :
'Sandra Ott, one of the leading experts on the history of the French Basques, offers an important and wonderfully readable study of the region during the Vichy Years. In Living with the Enemy, her ethnographic approach succeeds beautifully in describing and analyzing the relations between German occupiers and Basques in a place that in some significant ways stands apart from other regions in France. She brings to life the dramatic and complicated 'hidden' story of the German occupation and Vichy collaboration in the Basque country. Ott's compelling narrative and thoughtful conclusions nuance what we know about French collaboration with the Nazis during the Vichy years.' John Merriman, Charles Seymour Professor of History, Yale University
'A subtle and enthralling exploration of the myriad ways in which Germans and French were drawn together in complex webs of greed and vengeance, generosity and betrayal under the occupation. A magnificent contribution to the historiography.' Robert Gildea, University of Oxford
'This engaging and important book sees the big questions of France in the Second World War (questions of occupation and collaboration) refracted through the lives of individuals in one particular, and particularly interesting, region. It will be of special interest to those who study twentieth-century France or the Second World War, but it deserves a wider readership as well because it lives up to Marc Bloch's injunction that the historian should be like the ogre in the fairy tale who finds his prey 'by the smell of human flesh'.' Richard Vinen, King's College London
'Living with the Enemy provides a rich and nuanced view of daily life in the French Basque country and raises interesting questions about postwar justice. Ott does not shy away from the complexity of wartime interactions and explores the complicated, multifaceted, and ambiguous motivations that lay beneath Franco-German relationships. Drawing on historical and ethnographic methods, Sandra Ott has mined the trial dossiers for what they can tell us about the past, but she is also careful to acknowledge their limits. Her own voice as an anthropologist, one who has maintained relationships with Basque locals stretching back to 1976, adds another layer to her analysis and demonstrates the enduring memories of World War II. The end result is a regional study that contributes 'greatly to our understanding of the choices people made and the factors that motivated them', as well as to our ideas about collaboration and cohabitation during the war.' Shannon L. Fogg, German Studies Review
'Her [Ott's] anthropologically rich work is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of collaboration, resistance, and justice during the occupation and postwar and will be a useful reference for historians interested in the unique history of the Basque country. … an engaging work that adds to Sandra Ott's already extensive writing on the unique features of the southwest of France and further burnishes her reputation as a leading expert on Basque history and the Second World War.' Keith Rathbone, H-France
'Sandra Ott has written an important, original, and thoughtful book about Vichy France … Not only does her research add to the historiography of cohabitation and accommodation, but the importance of food, gifts, and hospitality that runs throughout these stories offers new ways of thinking about the occupation of France.' Ludivine Broch, The Journal of Modern History
'… offer[s] readers a view of the intersection of human experiences from which to best advance our understanding of how the petty politics of personal struggle can and have stained the historical record.' Nicole Dombrowski Risser, The American Historical Review
