Introduction; 1. Backgrounds; 2. Authenticity; 3. Veracity; 4. Textualization; 5. Frameworks; 6. Bearing witness; 7. From the outcasts' point of view; Conclusion.
This book examines how the Frenchmen who volunteered to fight for the Nazis account in their memoirs for their controversial decisions.
Educated in Switzerland, Philippe Carrard has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of Vermont and is currently a Visiting Scholar in the Comparative Literature Program at Dartmouth College. Over the past twenty years, his research has mainly concerned factual discourse - the discourse that claims to represent actual events and situations. In this area, he has published Poetics of the New History: French Historical Discourse from Braudel to Chartier (1992), as well as numerous articles and book chapters that analyze conventions of writing in nonfiction.
'Philippe Carrard's The French Who Fought for Hitler offers a
sensitive, intelligent, and thorough analysis of an important - and
until now taboo - subject: the memoirs and other writings of those
misguided Frenchmen who chose to fight for Hitler and Nazism during
World War II. In addition to filling a crucial gap in our
understanding of the French experience during the war, Carrard's
study serves as a cautionary tale and a grim reminder of the
dangers of political idealism and military virtue gone astray.'
Richard Golsan, Texas A&M University
'Based on a close textual and thematic reading of a set of memoirs
by former combatants, Philippe Carrard tells the largely ignored,
unsettling story of Frenchmen who chose to join the Nazis in World
War II and who typically present themselves as unsung heroes of
genuine political and ideological commitment. With an insistent
desire to tell their stories, often with unrepentant bravado, they
legitimate decisions, vindicate a fighting resolve, and
conveniently excise knowledge of discomfiting dimensions of the
past (notably genocidal policies and actions). The
'je-ne-regrette-rien' terms in which they testify may well surprise
or scandalize readers. Carrard's book is a model of its kind and a
basic contribution to a critical, rhetorically sensitive study of
memory and witnessing that successfully conjoins literary and
historical analysis.' Dominick LaCapra, Cornell University
'This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking book on a subject that
has never been treated at length before. The project is of real
interest and importance, and I admire Philippe Carrard for the
courage to undertake it, and to successfully complete it.' Susan
Rubin Suleiman, Harvard University, and author of Crises of Memory
and the Second World War
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