In general Gauleiters were subject to the authority of the occupying army. However, in August 1940, [Berlin] issued a decree granting full civil control to Wagner and Bürckel. Therefore, the two administrators of Alsace and Moselle possessed virtually unrestricted civil powers, and essentially were responsible only to Hitler himself. The two administrators held similar positions but their personalities and methods differed significantly (Iung et al., 2012).
Wagner, a WWI veteran, was of the view that the Wehrmacht and the party would be the means by which the local youth would complete their ideological and cultural assimilation. Bürckel, which was considered a “nazification” (Gleichschaltung) expert after being in charge of nazifying the Saar region, believed that assimilation through education was not possible and openly considered deporting part of the population and replacing them with German farmers. The course of the war on the Eastern Front favored Wagner’s approach.
The decision to grant German nationality to the populations of Alsace and Moselle was made on August 9, 1942. This made it possible to introduce military service in Alsace on August 25, 1942, and in Moselle on August 29, 1942. The administrators’ independence gave them broad discretion in implementing the policy. Wagner who felt that assimilation could be accomplished through military service, mobilized 20 cohorts in Alsace (1908–1927), while Bürckel only mobilized 14 in Moselle (1914–1927).⁹
In total 103,000 men from Alsace and 31,000 from Moselle were drafted into the Wehrmacht (MACVG, 1954). The process was otherwise identical in both departments (Iung et al., 2012). According to historians “the responsibility falls entirely on Gauleiter Wagner who did everything in his hand so that a maximum of Alsatians are incorporated in the Wehrmacht” (Riedweg, 1995, p.99), an explanation also put forward by the French National Statistical Institute after the War (INSEE, 1956, p.205).
[…]
In the meanwhile, life in Moselle went slowly back to normal. Street were renamed, all administrative managers were replaced, and public administration was reorganized. An urbanization plan that intended to merge small municipalities into larger ones was introduced and public transport was intensified. Large manifestations were frequent during the period. Measures were introduced to overcome potential shortages such as training days for business managers and incentives to farmers (Sary, 1983).
In parallel, Brückel proceeded to three waves of deportation of inhabitants not belonging to the “German people”, recent movers from other regions of France and inhabitants of French‐speaking municipalities.¹¹ Nonetheless, as summarized in Sary (1983), “during fours years, the occupying authorities worked with determination to earn the sympathy of the population of Moselle. A situation and activity of quasi‐normality was maintained in Metz, with an intense cultural life, several cultural events, and a supply of goods that was sufficient”.
[…]
The radical right resurfaced in the 1984 European parliament election when a list led by Jean‐Marie Le Pen, who claimed that the policies of both left‐ and right‐wing governments “betrayed popular trust”, received 11% of the vote. Up to that point, the radical right‐wing had campaigned with very limited success. In 1965 Jean‐Louis Tixier‐Vignancour received 5% of the votes on a platform to keep Algeria French, while in 1974 Le Pen only received 0.8% of the vote and did not run in 1981.
The success of the radical right was confirmed in the 1988 Presidential election with 14% of the vote. In his campaign, Le Pen wondered out loud “why [mainstream candidates] would do tomorrow what they did not know how to do yesterday”. The radical right has had a presence in every presidential election since.
Electoral participation was systematically lower in Alsace and Moselle than the rest of France until the 1980s. Since then, these regions have been strongholds of the radical right, where its share of the vote is well above the national average in every election. In 1988, Le Pen received 21% of the valid ballots in Alsace and Moselle, 47% more than the national average.
In 1995, Le Pen received the highest share of votes in the annexed departments out of the 101 departments in France (66% more than the average). In the elections from 2002 to 2017, the radical right’s vote share exceeded the national average by between 3 and 8 percentage points (22 to 41% above average).
[…]
Recall that in 1969 there was no radical right‐wing candidate. The results indicate that Wehrmacht draft eligibility is a powerful predictor of abstention in the 1965, 1969, and 1974 elections (Panel B). In later elections (after 1995) an increase in eligibility is associated to an increase in radical right‐wing support (Panel A).
The coefficients for 1995 and 2002 (Columns [4] and [5] of Panel A) are of similar magnitude as the early abstention coefficients. The effects in subsequent elections are positive, but fail to reach any conventional level of significance. The interplay between the effects is also noteworthy. When the coefficient on radical‐right wing support is positive and significant, it is negative for abstention, while when the effect is not statistically significant, it is positive for abstention.
[…]
Since women in Alsace and Moselle were not conscripted, being born in 1908–1913 in Alsace should not make any difference in political preferences. The results, presented in Panels A and B of Table A.4, show that women born during the 1908–1913 period do not differ neither with respect to political trust, nor in their sympathy of the radical right. […] Previous research has demonstrated how beliefs can be transmitted from parents to children and persist in environments that are different than the ones they were developed in Guiso et al. (2006).
To test whether this intergenerational transmission mechanism holds, I construct the likelihood that an individual’s father or grandfather was born during the 1908–1913 and 1914–1927 periods, using the 1962 to 2011 censuses organized by INSEE (and available on IPUMS‐I).²⁹ I then estimate Eq. (11) for the full sample of respondents. A separate coefficient is estimated for individuals affected directly, via their father, or via their grandfather(s).
The results are presented in Column (1) of Table 9. Two findings stand out: Firstly, both individuals whose father was eligible and those whose grandfather(s) was eligible display reduced political trust.
Secondly, transmission from the first to the second generation, as captured by the ratio of the two coefficients, is very strong: The effect for the second generation (−0.6) is statistically indistinguishable of the effect for the first (−0.536), while the effect for the third generation (−0.218) represents 35% of the effect for the second one (𝑝‐value=0.17, not statistically significant). These results point towards slow‐moving attitudes that are inherited from past generations.³⁰
(Emphasis added.)
Click here for other events that happened today (August 29).
1904: Werner Theodor Otto Forßmann, Axis scientist, was born.
1923: Rome delivered a seven‐point ultimatum to Greece demanding satisfaction over the recent murder of Fascist Italy’s General Tellini, with Athens given twenty‐four hours to agree to pay fifty million lire reparations, a full inquiry, execution of the killers, an official apology, and a funeral and military honours for the victims.
1937: Imperial aircraft damaged Chinese gunboat Chuyou at Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province, China, and Settsu, which had ferried a battalion of Sasebo 4th Special Naval Landing Force from the Empire of Japan, disembarked the troops onto light cruiser Natori and destroyer Yakaze off Shanghai.
1938: While the Third Reich’s head of state toured the Westwall defenses in western Germany, General Wilhelm Adam warned Berlin that the régime would be unable to defend against an invasion by France for more than three days should the Third Reich deploy most of its forces for an invasion of Czechoslovakia. The head of state grew furious at Adam, who would retire from service at the year’s end. Apart from that, the Imperialists captured Tianjia, Anhui, China.
1939: The Third Reich’s head of state summoned the three leading representatives of the Reich’s armed forces — Walther von Brauchitsch, Hermann Göring, and Erich Raeder together with senior Army commanders — to his mountain villa at Obersalzberg in southern Germany, where he announced the details of the recently signed German–Soviet nonaggression treaty, the plan to isolate and destroy Poland, and the formation of a buffer state in conquered Poland against the Soviets. As well, Berlin expressed through the Swedish businessman Birger Dahlerus that the German Reich only desired Danzig and a small section of the Polish Corridor, while a plebiscite should be held in the near future to determine the fate of the remainder of the Polish Corridor.
1940: Ribbentrop and Count Ciano met the Romanian and Hungarian Ministers in Vienna. At 1500 hours and 1915 hours, the Fascists launched large groups of fighters in an attempt to draw out British fighters, which were initially successful yet very quickly Air Vice Marshal Keith Park saw through the this attempt and recalled the fighters; only nine fighters were lost on either side. On this day, RAF leadership decided to stop using Defiant turret fighters as daylight interceptors as they were no match for enemy fighters. Overnight, Fascist bombers attacked Portsmouth, Tyneside, Hartlepool, Swansea, Manchester, and Liverpool; decoy fires were lit in the countryside to lure Fascist bombing, which were partially successful.
1941: The Axis captured Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, from the Soviets.
1942: The 4th Panzer Army broke through Soviet lines fifteen miles south of Stalingrad, and the Axis submarine RO‐33 damaged Australian troopship Marita in the Gulf of Papua south of Australian Papua at 1200 hours; Australian destroyer HMAS Arunta counterattacked and sank RO‐33, killing all forty‐two aboard. During the day, the Empire of Japan’s 144th Regiment attacked Australian troops at Isurava along the Kokoda Track in Papua. To the east, 769 Axis Special Naval Landing Force troops landed at Waga Waga on the coast of Milne Bay; the Axis cruiser and nine destroyers that covered the landing bombarded the Australian airfield at Gili Gili before returning to Rabaul, New Britain, causing little damage. Before dawn, Axis bombers attacked the village of Blackhall Colliery in County Durham, England, and the Axis also assaulted Swindon and Brighton. An Axis torpedo boat seriously damaged British destroyer HMS Eridge two miles off the Egyptian coast, slaughtering five folk.
1943: Denmark scuttled most of its navy; the Third Reich dissolved the Danish government.
1944: The Slovak National Uprising took place as 60,000 Slovak troops turn against the Axis.