Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac

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Jean-Louis Crémieux , called Crémieux-Brilhac , (born January 22, 1917 in Colombes , France , † April 8, 2015 in Paris ) was a member of the French resistance movement and later dealt with the Second World War as a historian . He was at times a high official of the French Republic.

Life

Origin and education

Crémieux came from a Jewish family that had lived in southern France for five centuries. He grew up in Paris and was politicized there very early; through his uncle, the literary critic Benjamin Crémieux (1888–1944), he met André Malraux and Stefan Zweig as a student . From 1924 to 1933 he attended the Lycée Condorcet , after which he began studying literature and history at the Sorbonne . Since 1931 he spent part of his vacation in Germany, where he witnessed the rise of National Socialism. In the years from 1935 to 1938 he was the youngest member of the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes (German: 'Vigilance Committee of the Antifascist Intellectuals').

From captivity to Free France

After Crémieux was drafted in September 1939, he first took part in a course at the Saint-Cyr military school . He was then assigned to the western end of the Maginot Line . On June 11th, he was captured on the Marne and transported to Germany. However, he managed to escape from the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag II B in Pomerania on January 4, 1941 . He reached the Soviet Union , where he was arrested and interned - like many other French who tried to get to Charles de Gaulle in London. The German attack on the Soviet Union , however, in June 1941 changed the situation: Free France was now an ally of the USSR and, together with 185 other French, he came to the UK, where he joined in September 1941 under the pseudonym Brilhac the forces of Free France joined .

In 1942 he was assigned to the Interior Department in London (Commissariat National à l'Intérieur) . Crémieux-Brilhac became secretary of the Propaganda Committee (Comité Exécutif de Propagande) and from the spring of that year to August 1944 was head of the service that supplied the underground movement of Free France with information. In this role he spoke several times for Radio Londres , the French radio broadcaster of the BBC . Crémieux-Brilhac was also involved in the preparation of the contributions to be broadcast in occupied Europe.

Participation in public life in the decades after the war

In 1945 Crémieux-Brilhac helped found the Documentation Française , the official French documentation center, of which he later became director. The information service that he had set up in London was integrated into this agency. He remained connected to de Gaulle during this time, but supported the politician and brief Prime Minister Pierre Mendès France in the 1950s .

Cremieux-Brilhac was also involved in educational policy and campaigned for the promotion of natural sciences in France. He was appointed Conseiller d'État and held this office from 1982 to 1986. In addition, he was one of the correspondents of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques .

Historian and contemporary witness

In retirement, Crémieux-Brilhac began to work as a historian of the Second World War. He dealt with the aspects that he knew very well from his own experience.

In his work Les Français de l'an Quarante (German: 'The French of 1940') he relativized the idea of ​​a demoralized France that was poorly prepared for war and would have lost it from the outset. Crémieux-Brilhac examined the attitudes of various sections of the population in the run-up to the German attack - during the so-called seated war - and took the position that the enormous efforts of French society to prepare for the war had a positive effect, but that the German troops marched in too early be.

In La France libre , Crémieux-Brilhac presented the first and so far only overall scientific account of the struggle of Free France. Although the book clearly shows his unbroken sympathy and admiration for de Gaulle and his colleagues, he did not hesitate to correct legends when this seemed appropriate. For example, he showed that the beginning of de Gaulle's “ Appeal of June 18 ” had been censored by the Foreign Office and that “Appeal of June 19” was never broadcast, or that fears harbored in 1944 were exaggerated, according to which the Americans would put France under military administration ( Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories - AMGOT ) . He underlined the importance of the rebuilding of state structures and the re-creation of republican legitimacy, which were done by the Comité de la Liberation Nationale. He also pointed out the great importance of individual personalities, some of whom have not been adequately appreciated, such as B. the general Georges Catroux .

His other publications include u. a. a documentary about the programs broadcast in French during the war on Radio Londres and also the experience report about the odyssey that finally took him from the German prisoner-of-war camps about internment in the USSR to London.

Awards

Works

  • Return par l'URSS. Calmann-Lévy , Paris 1945.
  • Ici Londres. Les Voix de la liberté. La Documentation française , Paris 1975–1977 (5 volumes).
  • Les Français de l'an 40. Gallimard , Paris 1990 (2 volumes).
  • La France Libre. De l'appel du 18 juin à la Liberation. Gallimard, Paris 1996.
  • Prisonniers de la liberté: l'odyssée des 218 évadés par l'URSS. Gallimard, Paris 2004.
  • Michael RD Foot : Des Anglais dans la Résistance: le service secret britannique d'action ( SOE ) en France. Foreword and notes to the French edition by Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac. Tallandier , Paris 2008.
  • Georges Boris , Trente ans d'influence. Gallimard, Paris 2010.
  • L'appel du 18 juin. Calmann-Lévy, Paris 1963, 1970; Armand Colin , Paris 2010.
  • Des Anglais dans la Resistance, une guerre irrégulière. Documentary by Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac and Laurène L'Allinec, 60 min., 2012; First broadcast: France 5, December 16, 2012.

Translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Report on the death of Crémieux-Brilhac as well as excerpts from the obituary of the French government
  2. ^ First in Carpentras , then in Nîmes and Narbonne .
  3. ↑ For a short biography cf. ac-creteil.fr
  4. ↑ Parismatch video documentation about Crémieux-Brilhac's captivity and the initial phase of Free France in London, accessed on June 13, 2013.
  5. ↑ See Ladocumentationfrancaise.fr
  6. ↑ Crémieux-Brilhac was z. B. the organizer of the Caen talks, which were important in France for the coordination of scientific research, in 1956 and 1966: Valérie Burgos: Les Assises au fil du temps: Regard sur les différentes consultations de la communauté scientifique au fil du temps (1938, 1948 , 1956, 1982) . Le Comité pour l'histoire du CNRS, November 16, 2012.
  7. ^ Canal Académie: Jean Louis Crémieux-Brilhac . Retrieved April 10, 2015.
  8. ↑ ceremony decree in Legifrance

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Crémieux-Brilhac, Jean-Louis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Crémieux, Jean-Louis; Brilhac (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French resistance fighter and historian
DATE OF BIRTH January 22, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Colombes
DATE OF DEATH April 8, 2015
Place of death Paris