In France, it's a fact, rightly or wrongly, that few folk celebrate the Battle of Waterloo, which took place exactly two centuries ago, on 18 June 1815.
My wife and I used to drive to Waterloo often when we were living in Brussels, but it’s an uninteresting place. Funnily enough, I’ve always been intrigued by the fact that the illustrious Napoléon Bonaparte was defeated by a dull Englishman, Wellington, neither in France nor in England… but on the outskirts of the Belgian capital. That has always appeared to me as what the French call une histoire belge (a Belgian tale, which might be translated as a shaggy dog story).
Maybe we should have made an effort for the second centenary of this terrible defeat… but it’s not easy to rouse enthusiasm for this affair. Besides, France has always had an excellent reason for celebrating a quite different event: the BBC radio speech of Charles de Gaulle on June 18, 1940.
Be that as it may, the French newspaper Le Monde has just reacted to this anniversary by the publication of a moving English-language editorial addressed to our British neighbors:
During my wonderful three-year stint with Pierre Schaeffer at the Service de la Recherche de l’ORTF, I had countless encounters with amazing individuals. Some of them were linked, in one way or another, to the sombre period of the Nazi occupation of France, and the glorious French Résistance.
Michel Anthonioz [1947-2009] was a friendly soft-spoken colleague whose major contribution, in the context of our Schaefferian research group, was his fascination with the New World hippies described by our sociologist friend Edgar Morin in his Journal de Californie. I never knew with certainty whether Michel Anthonioz himself had actually been in direct contact with this Californian world (probably not), or whether he was simply fascinated by his contact with Morin.
Once, in a rare moment, Michel explained to me that he would like to create some kind of a documentary film about the life of his mother: Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz [1920-2002]. At the time, I wasn’t yet familiar with the exploits of this woman, but I understood that my friend Michel was faced with some kind of an unspoken creative barrier at the level of his heavy heritage.
Michel is no longer with us… and I can’t even find a photo of my friend on the web. I remember him as a highly emotional person. Tonight, Michel’s mother will enter the Panthéon in Paris. It’s a terrible pity that he won’t be there to witness the events…
Exactly 70 years ago, on 25 August 1944, General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque arrived in Paris at the head of tanks of his celebrated armored division known as the 2nd DB. Dietrich von Choltitz, the German military governor of Paris, received a furious phone call from Hitler, who screamed out "Brennt Paris?"Is Paris burning? No, the city was not burning, thanks in part to the tergiversations of von Choltitz, who finally signed a capitulation document at the Hôtel Meurice.
Paris was liberated!
Before the end of the day, Charles de Gaulle had arrived at the Hôtel de Ville, where he delivered a short declaration that would go down in French history as one of the nation's greatest moments.
POST SCRIPTUM
The liberation of Paris in August 1944 was a considerably more complicated affair than what we might imagine today in viewing these videos. There was much bloodshed and injustice. Many self-proclaimed résistants were in fact recent Nazi collaborators. One detail needs to be clarified. The Nazi von Choltitz (who had annihilated many cities in a "scorched earth" style) must never be thought of as a hero whose deep respect for Paris saved the city from destruction. Bullshit! If von Choltitz refrained from destroying Paris, this was surely because he realized that the tide was turning, and that there was no sense in committing a crime that would have culminated inevitably and rapidly in his capture and execution. In other words, the ugly Nazi bugger "saved" Paris with a view to saving his own evil skin.
