安娜-冯-德-戈尔茨和罗伯特-吉尔德亚
牛津大学马格达伦学院和牛津大学
摘要
尽管兴登堡和贝当来自截然不同的历史传统，一个是君主专制，一个是民主共和，但他们在二十世纪的发展轨迹和崇拜其实有很多共同之处。
两人都是作为军事英雄出现的，在1914年以标志性的胜利拯救了祖国，随后在魏玛和第三共和国陷入困境和崩溃时，两人都被召回，成为政治救星。
每个人的地位和声誉都被一种既是制造出来的又是自发的崇拜所提高，这种崇拜广泛涉及政治光谱并深入到政治体中。
这些崇拜借助了强大的稳固性和古代英雄的形象。
然而，两位领导人都有缺陷，向纳粹权力妥协，而且他们被埋葬在远离其胜利之地的地方。
然而，尽管有这些缺陷，兴登堡和贝当的崇拜却具有明显的适应性和持久性。
关键词：崇拜，兴登堡，神话，贝当
1927年9月18日，在第一次世界大战结束近9年后，法国和德国为其两个最大的战争纪念碑的外壳举行了落成典礼。
位于法国杜奥蒙村和东普鲁士霍恩施泰因镇的纪念馆分别纪念了战争中最著名的两场战役：
凡尔登和坦能堡。
杜奥蒙的骨灰盒里有数千名战死者的遗体，它向法国人在凡尔登--"绞肉机"--的10个月里所表现出的坚韧不拔的精神致敬。
由于坦能堡战役是在德国领土上与俄国侵略者进行的，因此它也是维持德国打防守战说法的核心。
这两座国家纪念馆的揭幕为编纂法国和德国的战争记忆做出了重大贡献。
这两座纪念碑都是为了纪念在各自国家的土地上进行的战斗，尽管在数量上处于劣势，但还是取得了胜利。
两者都是由各自国家最伟大的战争英雄和活着的神话揭幕的：菲利普-贝当元帅和陆军元帅兼帝国总统保罗-冯-兴登堡。
在1927年9月18日这个非周年纪念日，在 "凡尔登之父 "和 "坦能堡之子 "的见证下举行仪式，这不可能是巧合。
兴登堡和贝当在庆祝他们过去的胜利时，显然有更多当前的政治议程在考虑。
这位年近八旬的德国总统巧妙地抓住时机，加强了对德国战争罪责的公开抗争。
5 在杜奥蒙，贝当同样坚持认为，战时法国的团结与战时第三共和国的享乐主义和个人主义形成了鲜明的对比。
这位70岁的元帅认为，"凡尔登精神 "必须继续成为法国民族生活的基础。
兴登堡和贝当之间的相似之处既不是从这一天开始，也不是从这一天结束。
正如我们所看到的，围绕每个人的神话故事在其起源、内容、发展、功能、历史后果以及对两人的职业轨迹的影响方面都有惊人的相似。
贝当在第一次世界大战中成为法国的英雄，他将作为法国的救世主被召回，先是在1934年担任战争部长，然后在1940年担任维希政府的领导人。8
兴登堡作为国家救世主的形象同样起源于战争时期，他在1925年当选总统，将德国从内乱中拯救出来，并在1932年再次当选，将共和国从纳粹主义中拯救出来。
1945年后，这两个人都被重新塑造成反英雄，因为据说他们把自己的人民 "送 "给了纳粹。
尽管有这种显著的重叠，围绕兴登堡和贝当的神话却从未被系统地比较过。9
如果考虑到兴登堡的总统身份，特别是他作为霍亨索伦君主制和纳粹独裁之间的桥梁的神话声誉，他的长期和强烈的崇敬似乎同样不民主。10
相比之下，贝当的独裁统治和崇拜通常被描绘成自1789年以来法兰西共和国和国家历史中的反常现象，因为它具有不民主的性质，而可以说，它需要被置于其他 "强人 "的背景下，这些人在危机时刻负责，呼吁 "永恒的法国 "的价值和连续性。11
在法国和德国并不经常被放在一起的时期，对贝当和兴登堡的神话进行比较，有望对超越国界的英雄崇拜的共同语言进行富有成效的洞察，甚至可以开始发现法国和德国在两次世界大战时代的更深远的相似之处。
踏上神话般的舞台
第一次世界大战爆发时，兴登堡和贝当都相对不为人知。
虽然后者在几年内不会在全国范围内成名，但兴登堡在第一声枪响后的几周内就成为了德国家喻户晓的名字。
当兴登堡，这位1847年10月2日出生在波森的普鲁士贵族，在1911年64岁时退休时，他可以回顾自己成功而多事的军事生涯。
然而，德国公众却没有注意到这一点。
这种情况几乎在一夜之间发生了变化，他被召回现役，领导德国在东普鲁士的第8军团，并因策划了1914年8月底在坦能堡对俄罗斯的胜利而受到赞扬。
公众对坦能堡的热情只能在集体受害意识的背景下理解，德国宣传家在战前就通过煽动恐俄症和对包围的恐惧播下了这种种子。
早在1914年8月29日，一份关于兴登堡的传记就被分发给了德国所有的主要报纸。12
在此基础上，自由派的《柏林日报》很快就对他的性格提出了见解：
"这位67岁的[原文如此]绅士 "以 "铁一般的精力 "拿起了他那把 "经过考验的剑"，"以44年前对付法国人时的冷静和冷血来挥舞它"。
因此，早在1914年8月，"冷静 "和 "平静 "的兴登堡的概念就诞生了，它在大海中的一块石头的形象中找到了令人回味的表达方式--最终的坚忍不拔的物体。14
据一位德国诗人说，"兴登堡 "这个名字--是更长的 "冯-贝内肯多尔夫和冯-兴登堡 "的上口的简称--听起来 "黑暗、沉闷、沉重和德国"。
不久之后，第一张图片开始流传，并与这个名字相匹配：他不是一个 "优雅、潇洒 "的人，而是一个 "沉重、强大......的方头将军"。15
兴登堡因此体现了一种特殊的男性气质；
他不是一个充满青春活力的战士，而是通过他的长方形特征和宽阔的框架象征着阳刚的力量。
他的冷静也是一种典型的男性美德，与兴登堡的得力助手埃里希-鲁登道夫将军所谓的 "善变的、女人式的思想变化 "16形成对比。
神话和神话中的英雄人物很少是新的发明，因为如果它们符合一个社会的想象力结构并建立在语义和符号学传统之上，就更容易获得效力。
他用舒适的退休生活换取了现役，这一点至关重要：他表现出了对所有士兵的牺牲意愿。
这种所谓的对社会的自我牺牲的奉献精神将成为他的神话的一个重要组成部分，它建立在传统英雄史诗的核心--基督教的殉道思想之上。18
兴登堡坚持认为，他强烈的责任感促使他去服役，这也将成为他的神话的一个组成部分，这样一来，他就建立在一个基本的普鲁士-德国理想之上。
此外，这位新晋元帅很快就被比作 "巴巴罗萨"，即中世纪的霍亨斯陶芬皇帝弗里德里希一世，传说他睡在凯夫豪瑟山，直到有一天他回来复活德意志帝国。
兴登堡战前在汉诺威的平静生活，他在1914年的胜利回归，以及坦能堡引发的广泛热情，解释了为什么兴登堡在公众舞台上的出现被誉为巴巴罗萨式的回归。20
赫尔曼神话同样加剧了兴登堡的突然崇拜。
正如赫尔曼与罗马人的战斗取得了胜利一样，兴登堡现在据说是在团结德国人对抗斯拉夫人的进攻。21
最后，对俾斯麦的崇拜无疑促进了兴登堡的荣耀--兴登堡在身体上很像 "铁血宰相"，经常被誉为 "新俾斯麦 "22。
兴登堡神话的构建并不是主要由德国宣传人员策划的。
事实上，在战争的头几个月里，必要的基础设施甚至还没有到位，无法开展这样大规模的宣传活动。
同时，德国民众也做了很多工作，把兴登堡从下面提升到神话般的高度。
他的追随者们在他身上珍视在欧洲历史上第一场真正的现代战争中生存所需要的价值：威慑力、战斗技巧、冷静、愿意牺牲和对祖国的责任感。
兴登堡的口头禅 "兴登堡会解决的 "体现了这样一种思想：
尽管在国内和前线遭受了所有的困难，但如果人们相信他的英雄品质，一切都会好起来的。
在战争爆发后的几年内，兴登堡已经变成了德国的最高象征性人物，超越了所有的竞争者，甚至使他的君主威廉二世也黯然失色。
他的得力助手埃里希-鲁登道夫（Erich Ludendorff）同样令人钦佩，但他既没有兴登堡的冷静，也没有让他的神话超越军事领域的人情味。25
1916年8月，当埃里希-冯-法尔肯海恩的职位不再稳固时，德皇别无选择，只能任命兴登堡为总参谋长--与此同时，贝当元帅正在法国进入神话的舞台。
结果，这位元帅在德国公共生活中变得更加无处不在。
人们在报纸上读到他的消息，在报刊上看到他的照片，在电影院里看到他的身影，寄来明信片，购买装饰有他标志性画像的产品，在墙上挂上他的画框，为他庆祝生日，在学校里唱起他的赞歌26。
和兴登堡一样，菲利普-贝当在第一次世界大战之前，即1914年4月就已经退休了。
如果不是战争在8月爆发，他只是一名上校，除了在军团的史册上有所记载外，不会有更多的东西。
与兴登堡不同，他不是一个贵族军官，而是来自法国北部的一个农民家庭。
法国军官团长期以来一直向非贵族开放，但直到德雷福斯事件，它一直被保皇党和波拿巴主义者所控制。
贝当受过耶稣会教育，但他接受了共和国，并从它实行的任人唯贤制度中受益。
1914年8月，他被提升为将军，并于1916年2月被授予凡尔登的指挥权，这个边境要塞遭受了德军前所未闻的猛烈轰炸，濒临失守的边缘。
尽管他不得不从他的情妇在北站附近的总站旅馆的床上被叫起来，但他在同一天的午夜就到了凡尔登后面的苏伊镇政府的岗位上。
凡尔登是法国人，特别是贝当的一个创始时刻，是法国边境上最伟大的防御战。
它创造了一个不屈不挠的poilu或士兵-农民的传奇，他们为了确保自己的土地和法国的土地而挖地三尺。28
1916年12月，他被推选为总司令，当时尼韦勒将军被任命为总司令，但1917年4月尼韦勒在Chemin des Dames的攻势失败，代价巨大，引起了一波兵变。
贝当现在被任命为西线总司令，并着手恢复军纪。
有50人被处决，但贝当的主要方法是通过物质和心理措施的结合来提高军队的士气：
定期休假、休息时间、更好的口粮。
最重要的是，他亲自鼓励他的部队，在几个月内访问了90支部队，恢复了他们的勇气和动力，并获得了父亲形象的声誉。29
1918年12月8日，普恩卡雷总统在新解放的梅斯举行的阅兵式上向贝当颁发了元帅的接力棒，将神话的两个要素结合起来。
普恩卡雷宣布：
"从今以后，1916年[凡尔登]和1917年[军队获救]被连成一顶桂冠"。
对每个人来说，他是 "凡尔登的胜利者 "和 "军队的拯救者"。
他既是他的部下们深爱的指挥官，也是法国胜利的魅力象征'。
在危机时刻，法国不时地寻找救世主。
在1799年和在1799年和1848年，是波拿巴将法国从国际危险、内战和正在陷入混乱的政权中解救出来。
然而，波拿巴的麻烦在于，他们推翻了他们本应加强的共和国，并在滑铁卢和色当将国家引向军事灾难。
在经历了保皇党和波拿巴派伪君子数十年的挑战后，大战终于嵌入了第三共和国，并造就了一批共和派将军，他们有朝一日可能拯救国家，而不会威胁到政权或挑起新的战争。
贝当不是唯一一个在战争中获得荣誉的军事领导人。
在1919年7月14日的胜利游行中，他与1918年西线总司令、盟军战争总指挥福煦元帅鞋对鞋走下香榭丽舍大街。
然而，福煦在和约问题上与政府首脑克莱蒙梭发生争执，并在吞并莱茵河左岸的要求上被否决了。
福煦将自己视为新的拿破仑，并在1921年5月在荣军院举行的拿破仑逝世一百周年纪念仪式上以低沉的语调呼唤皇帝的名字。
然而，拿破仑，这位进攻性战争的大师和共和国的掘墓人，在1918年后并不流行。
相比之下，贝当更倾向于进行顽强的防御性战争，以节省生命损失，他有一个农民出身的士兵的声誉，了解他的部队的优势和劣势。
他体现了与兴登堡一样的顽强、爱国责任和牺牲精神的价值观。
因此，1920年被任命为战争部长下属的高级战争委员会副主席这一最高职位的是贝当，而不是福煦31。
重返神话舞台
第一幕
兴登堡从未真正离开过神话的舞台。
他的神话在1918年德国的军事失败中幸存下来--他的领导层曾承诺要避免这一失败。
在鲁登道夫于1918年10月被解职、德皇于1918年11月9日退位之后，兴登堡决定 "留在这个岗位上"，这被坚定地解释为他的神话叙事框架：
尽职的服务和 "超人的 "牺牲。
兴登堡元帅本人也赞同这一评价，并在后来要求对他在1918年的 "殉难 "进行补偿。33
兴登堡是一个牺牲者和殉道者式的英雄，为了国家的利益而一再受苦，并因此而欠下债务，这一概念在他的政治生涯中反复出现，与贝当后来向法国捐赠 "个人礼物 "的言论相呼应。
至关重要的是，兴登堡神话在1918/19年仍然存在，因为它仍然符合德国社会大部分人的社会期望：
从战争中抢救出一些积极的东西，并在战时的混乱之后重建一种秩序、安宁和连续性的感觉。34
重建秩序和防止混乱对民主左派特别重要，他们的领导人把他们的信心放在旧帝国的精英身上，特别是军队，而不是放在革命委员会来实现这些目标。
这个在1914年帮助德国抵御俄国进攻的人被重新塑造成 "像大海中的岩石一样坚定地挡住了动荡的浪潮 "的英雄。36
几年后，因在1919年1月粉碎斯巴达克斯起义而声名狼藉的社会民主党政治家古斯塔夫-诺斯克仍然称赞兴登堡是一个 "不可动摇的大坝"，挡住了革命的 "洪水"。
兴登堡的神话在战争中幸存了下来，并增加了 "拯救 "国家于更大的混乱和无序的叙述层。
因此，在1925年的总统竞选中，他的神话并没有被重现。39
竞选中最广泛的海报显示了白色背景上元帅标志性的头像，上面有一个手写的标题，简单地写着 "救世主"（见图1）。
一张连兴登堡的名字都没有的海报，就足以传达支持兴登堡的右翼政党的信息：
"希望和信任将在多年的痛苦失望之后回归，......人民的英雄将第二次拯救祖国。"40
许多德国人对这个信息做出了直观的反应。
据一位来自柏林的格拉姆夫人说，她在过度膨胀期间 "失去了一切"，"我们的兴登堡将带来抵押贷款的重新估价，然后我们就会过得更好。"41
投票给兴登堡并不是在行使一项民主权利，而是在清偿债务，履行对一个人的责任--兴登堡和德国人民之间神秘结合的自然表现。
民族主义的选举材料成功地将兴登堡描绘成了共和国的对立面。
他的当选将带来 "德国精神的坦能堡"；他将为年轻的德国人树立一个教育榜样，以克服人民在宗教、政治和社会方面的分裂。43
战后几年的近乎内战、恶性通货膨胀和被认为的国际耻辱显然已经造成了损失。
当议会制度似乎无法满足人们对经济、社会和政治稳定的期望时，选民们又回到了战时匮乏时期所演练的应对策略上--选择相信兴登堡 "能解决这个问题"。
因此，他的神话般的诱惑力帮助他夺取了国家的最高职位，而他在竞选中正是以这个职位为对立面。
最重要的是，左翼不愿意大力攻击德国最令人尊敬的人物，这大大削弱了共和党的运动并使其陷入混乱。
正如《前线报》所写的那样，"我们的斗争不是针对他。44
这种在攻击政治对手方面的胆怯，是十多年来跨党派对兴登堡的大量崇拜的结果，在很大程度上促成了他的胜利。
1925年4月26日，他以90多万张选票击败了对手威廉-马克思，不到三周就宣誓就职。
由于兴登堡的当选是在魏玛德国政治和社会 "相对稳定 "的时期之后进行的，因此人们很想把缓解政治紧张局势和巩固共和国的工作归功于这位新总统。
一位民主派政治家指出，经济复苏 "至少似乎是建立在总统府的宁静和建立信心的安全感之上的"。46
兴登堡上任不到一年，尖锐的左翼记者卡尔-冯-奥西茨基就指出，资产阶级共和国的媒体正在他头上编织新的花环。
旧的传奇故事集中在他的军事天才上，而这位未来的诺贝尔奖获得者现在发现了一个不断发展的共和主义 "兴登堡传奇"，根据这个传奇，他是 "魏玛政治的基石"--就像他在1918/19年是一块稳定的 "岩石 "一样。47
到1930年，自由派的《法兰克福报》明确赞扬了右派力量提名的 "最佳人选"。48
这份可以说是最有声望的共和党报纸的坦率承认，清楚地表明了惊人的多面性的兴登堡神话是如何跨越魏玛的深层政治断层的--尽管没有使他的不同信徒相互喜欢。
菲利普-贝当(Philippe Pétain)要比兴登堡等得更久，才被当作救世主召回。
在1920年代的法国，军人反而失去了他们的光环。
戴高乐在1945年说：
"元帅是一个伟大的人，就我而言，他死于1925年。"49
然而，1930年后，法兰西第三共和国越来越像魏玛，处于经济混乱和内战的边缘。
它受到来自左翼的马克思主义共产主义和社会主义的威胁，以及来自右翼的法西斯主义的威胁。
1934年2月6日，法西斯联盟在众议院外示威，使政府垮台。
一个所谓的国防政府在加斯东-杜默格（Gaston Doumergue）的领导下成立了；77岁的贝当被任命为战争部长。
这个政府，就像之前的许多政府一样，只持续了几个月。
当它在1934年11月倒台时，大众发行的《小报》在其读者中进行了一次投票，询问他们如果要选择一个独裁者，他们会选择谁--恢复国家的权威，但又不像统治德国和俄国的暴君。
超过20万名读者来信，贝当在投票中名列前茅，领先于皮埃尔-拉瓦尔、加斯东-杜默格和退伍军人克鲁瓦运动的德拉罗克上校。
在这种背景下，古斯塔夫-埃尔韦（Gustave Hervé）策划了一场更加协调一致的支持贝当的运动，他在1914年之前是一个反军国主义者，之后则是一个沙文主义者。
在他1935年的小册子《我们必须的是贝当》（C'est Pétain qu'il nous faut!）中，他认为元帅是 "在我们国家光荣而痛苦的历史上的悲惨时刻，从来都不需要的天赐之人"。
在1936年的选举中，大多数支持改革的候选人应该给贝当一个6个月的独裁统治，以起草'一个基于公司制的专制共和国'的宪法。
贝当的理由是，他不是一个会篡夺共和国并将法国拖入另一场血腥战争的波拿巴。
相反，他是兴登堡模式的救世主，并明确地进行了比较，强调了这两个神话之间的跨国联系。
在预料到贝当太老不能管理国家的论点时，埃尔韦指出，"当兴登堡老元帅同意参加1925年魏玛共和国的总统选举，以召集所有爱国的德国人时，他比贝当还老"。
贝当会发动一场军事政变吗？
'你在28岁时发动政变，而不是在贝当的年龄。
兴登堡元帅没有发动政变，让他所爱的霍亨索伦家族回来。
最后，贝当是否意味着战争？'
谁能相信贝当，这个最不倾向于无意义的血腥战斗、最关注士兵状况、最人性化的领导人，是一个嗜血的怪物？
相反，埃尔韦说，被凡尔登的荣耀所笼罩的他最有资格'以大战中生者和死者的名义，握住希特勒两年来为我们伸出的手'51。
因此，在1940年上台前五六年，贝当就被宣传为可能的拯救者。
他比兴登堡更潇洒，更像个女汉子，但他的挺拔姿态，他的威严和他的远见却让人印象深刻。
古罗马历史学家、后来成为贝当教育部长的热罗姆-卡尔科皮诺（Jérôme Carcopino）评论说：
"他的眼睛是大理石的光芒，在一张和谐的脸庞上。"52
贝当的呼吁绕过了政治家，与更深层的法国产生了共鸣，一个永恒的法国，代表着他们祖先的土地，农民士兵曾为之战斗和牺牲，还有那些早于新贵波拿巴家族的民族英雄和女英雄。
1932年，当杜奥蒙（Douaumont）骨灰堂最终落成时，他再次向凡尔登的死者表示敬意，1935年，在卡普勒-朱尼亚克（Capoulet-Juniac）的战争纪念碑揭幕仪式上，他宣布在战争期间，农民确保了步兵的 "稳固性"，"只要敌人在法国土地上践踏，就会保持热情的战斗承诺。
贝当说：
"在最黑暗的时刻--我将在这块纪念碑前回忆起它"，"是农民平静而坚定的神情支撑着我的信心"。53
他对圣女贞德的崇拜也是以她的农民韧性来解释的。
圣女贞德是法国的农民"，他在1940年的黑暗日子里对丘吉尔的使者斯皮尔斯说，"我们的农民是法国土地的一部分。
你们在英国有农民吗？我很怀疑--水手，是的，但这不是一回事。"54
他以这种方式宣称自己是一个能够团结和解放法国的领导人。
第二幕
1932年，84岁的兴登堡再次被召唤为德国的救世主。55 当所谓的魏玛党（社会民主党、中央党和德国民主党的继承者--德意志国家党）--兴登堡1925年的对手--联合起来使他连任时，他的许多前支持者却为他的右翼对手西奥多-杜斯特伯格或阿道夫-希特勒竞选，希望加速共和国的消亡。57 如果共和党人仅仅把现任总统作为 "两害相权取其轻 "58 --反希特勒 --来支持他，并且民族主义右派彻底反对他，那么人们就会认为竞选活动中完全没有神话般的言论。59 兴登堡的民族主义反对者将他们与兴登堡的政治斗争理解为 "最忠诚的反对派 "60 ，而纳粹则小心翼翼地将他们的宣传指向兴登堡所代表的 "制度"，而不是他的 "人格 "61。
在500万失业者和德国街头的内战景象下，兴登堡的救世主身份仍然是一种无价的政治货币。这并不是巧合，与1925年一样，民主报刊把他在选举中的决定性胜利誉为危机和灾难时期的 "救赎"。甚至连普鲁士社会民主党部长奥托-布劳恩（Otto Braun）也称赞总统是 "连续性"、"阳刚的忠诚 "和 "尽职的服务 "的化身。64 总统办公室收到的一些针对兴登堡1932年3月10日在德国国家广播电台发表的演讲的信件，说明了这些主题在普通德国人中引起的共鸣程度。一位来自柏林的妇女在聆听兴登堡的演讲时，坐在兴登堡的相框画像下，坚信 "兴登堡仍然是德国的救世主"。她阐述了她的虔诚的宗教方面，她继续说：两千年前，救世主也被钉在十字架上，但仍然成功了"。
甚至当共和阵营指望兴登堡作为反对纳粹主义的堡垒，而普通德国人也坚持他们对兴登堡作为自我牺牲的基督式救世主的信念，埃德加-朱利叶斯-荣格，"保守主义革命 "的主要右翼知识分子之一，仍然把现任总统作为 "魏玛的混乱 "的救世主。66用卡尔-冯-奥西茨基的话说，兴登堡因此成为 "一个英雄的框架，任何人都可以把他想要的五彩缤纷的幻想夹在上面。"67即使这位观察家低估了总统本人在填补这个 "英雄框架 "中的作用，他指出他的吸引力的惊人广度也是正确的。在这个政治分裂和两极分化严重的时期，没有其他人物能够团结从保守的君主主义者到政治天主教徒、社会民主党人和铁血阵线所代表的工会成员。一个人的魏玛救星可能是另一个人的魏玛救星--但还是一个救星。
1月30日，在他作为反对纳粹的堡垒连任后不到一年，兴登堡任命希特勒为德国总理。他们对兴登堡作为共和国稳定的保证人的信任，使共和党人不愿意让总统对1930年以来悄悄进行的宪法接管负责。面对日益增长和反复出现的政治失望，不愿意--也没有能力--彻底探究兴登堡的神话，这是共和国消亡的一个核心方面。依靠受人尊敬的兴登堡作为政治合法性的来源，帮助纳粹缓解了从民主到独裁的过渡。兴登堡和希特勒之间公开展示的团结，如1933年3月21日臭名昭著的 "波茨坦之日"，使许多政治上比较温和和资产阶级的德国人相信希特勒统治的好处。
然而，也许最能说明兴登堡的神话魅力的长久性和持久性的是，尽管他是纳粹接管的同谋，但他仍然是政权反对者的集结点。他仍然是最后的手段--保护性的盾牌或大坝--是在最后关头抵抗日益压迫的纳粹独裁政权的希望之源69。
许多人认为他是政权的受害者，或者至少是一个被利用的耄耋老人。犹太公务员维克多-克伦佩勒（Victor Klemperer）对希特勒的任命作出了反应，他说服自己，兴登堡在1933年1月30日不可能头脑清醒；在心怀叵测的顾问的指导下，他把希特勒带入了政权，现在不过是一个 "傀儡"。70 纳粹反对者深信兴登堡是站在他们一边的，他们的笑话作为他们焦虑的释放阀，经常把这位年迈的总统描绘成纳粹主义的同胞受害者："德国最小的集中营是什么？71 毕竟，1914年、1925年和1932年的 "救世主 "怎么可能认可日益凶残的纳粹政策？
兴登堡于1934年8月2日去世，此后希特勒将总理和总统的职位合并，完成了 "夺权"，这让许多反对该政权的人感到沮丧，并对即将发生的事情感到恐惧。尽管他认为兴登堡无能为力已经有一段时间了，但克伦佩尔现在却'非常沮丧'。72 兴登堡在1934年之前仍然是正式的国家元首，这在心理上是很重要的--尽管他明显地与政权勾结，但他仍然像是希特勒通往全面权力之路的最后障碍。兴登堡会 "解决事情 "并以某种方式 "拯救 "德国，这种无形的信念在过去20年里对社会的不同群体意味着不同的东西。尽管他一再辜负了人们对他的希望，但这一机制直到1933年后仍基本保持不变。最终，那些早在1932年就希望他能把国家从纳粹统治中拯救出来的人的信任被痛苦地剥夺了。
1940年5月至6月，当第三共和国在德国的进攻下崩溃时，菲利普-贝当终于被召回来拯救法国。他是负责任的人。没有发生军事政变。当失败似乎不可避免时，贝当主张停战，并应共和国总统的邀请于6月16日组建了一个政府。7月10日，在维希举行的法国众议院和参议院会议以569票对80票、17票弃权的多数票赋予他起草新宪法的全权。这次投票显示了贝当对所有政治派别的吸引力，因为众议院仍然是1936年选出的众议院，其中57%的社会党人和58%的激进党人给他投了全权，而在参议院中占主导地位的激进党人也有82%的投票权。
解放时以及后来被遗忘的是，贝当的行动得到了多么广泛和深入的认可。贝当要求的停战被批准了，因为法国被打败了，现在是一个拯救生命的问题。如果没有像1914年那样的 "马恩河的奇迹"，就不应该有另一个凡尔登。此外，这一次的战争不仅涉及士兵。74当其他法国领导人抛弃他们的职位时，贝当仍然是他的人民的父亲--就像兴登堡在1918年留在他的岗位上一样。贝当关注着法国人的愿望和恐惧，正如他在大战期间对他的士兵一样。6月13日，他在部长会议上说："我不会放弃法国的土地，并将忍受强加给祖国和它的儿子们的痛苦。法国的复兴将是这种苦难的成果。75停战和在维希组建的政府对整个法国拥有正式的主权，为国家的道德和物质复兴开辟了道路。他在6月25日宣布："我们的失败是我们懈怠的结果"。
快乐原则摧毁了由牺牲精神建立起来的东西。我邀请你们首先进行一次智力和道德改革。法国人民，我保证，从你们的热情和努力中，你们将看到一个新的法国出现。
贝当对法国人民的呼吁，与他的神秘结合，超越了 "合法法国 "中那些名誉扫地的政治家。小说家弗朗索瓦-莫里亚克（François Mauriac）在《费加罗报》上写道："贝当元帅在6月25日晚的讲话，'听起来几乎超越了时间。我们听到的不是一个人的声音，而是我们被羞辱的伟大民族从我们的历史深处发出的呼吁 "77。
这种神秘的结合不是通过选举会议来表达的，因为在维希时期的法国没有选举，而是通过元帅的巡视，类似于皇家的进步，通过仪式和典礼、组织和协会来表达。贝当就是法国，法国就是贝当"，1940年11月贝当元帅访问里昂时，里昂大主教宣布，民众的崇拜是一种宗教性的。78后来加入戴高乐的陆军军官和逃亡的战俘亨利-弗雷内描述了贝当1940年12月在马赛对法国战斗军团15000人的检阅，现在所有退伍军人的协会都在其中：
国家元首从他的车上下来，表情严肃而庄重。他身着制服。他面无表情地打量着电闪雷鸣的人群，他挥舞着手中的棍子向他们致敬。他的头发像雪一样白，眼睛是淡蓝色的，他的平静有一种强烈的效果......。一个穿着宽大褶皱衣服的大个子女人，可能是个渔夫，跪下来虔诚地亲吻他的衣摆。我从来没有见过这样的宗教狂热。
在德国的一百万战俘是对贝当忠诚的另一个来源。在他当战俘的奥夫拉格（Oflag），让-吉顿（Jean Guitton）成立了一个国民革命研究小组，并回忆起1941年圣诞节前夕在广播中听到贝当的声音。它是稳定而强大的。它给了我们勇气。我看着我的邻居们。他们低着头，弯着腰。小屋里一片寂静，这种罕见的寂静就是语言本身。
维希特别培养战俘的妻子，因为她们是丈夫在法国土地上的爱国主义的化身，反过来，她们写了超过四分之一寄给贝当的信，因为她们相信贝当会带她们的丈夫回家。通过 "母亲节"（Fête des Mères），也就是每年5月在市政厅庆祝的天主教节日，来征求广大妇女的忠诚，妇女们把贝当做保护者、顾问，甚至是神奇的人物81。在学校里，孩子们通过给他们在维希的想象中的祖父写文章和画画来培养他们的忠诚度。热拉尔-安布罗塞利（Gérard Ambroselli）创作的一系列木刻画描绘了贝当职业生涯的关键时刻，就像圣人的一生，而学校大厅则响起了《Maréchal, nous voilà》的旋律！82 在后来，孩子们被招募到致力于培养社区精神和对贝当忠诚的组织（见图2）。1940年11月，取代兵役的青年会的年轻人聚集在特朗塞森林的一棵老橡树旁，教育部长告诉他们，贝当和这棵橡树一样，是 "三次拯救法国的人"。
贝当引用的法国不是中央集权的、革命的、拿破仑式的法国，而是小城镇和村庄的法国，是那些被19世纪民俗学家重新定义了身份的古老省份。1940年10月，他访问了奥弗涅的安贝尔村，那里是乡村小说家亨利-普拉特（Henri Pourrat）的故乡，他描述了元帅与一个穿着木屐的农民的对话。这个农民体现了 "尘世的智慧，以基督教的智慧为冠。84 同样，他还去了普罗旺斯地区主义者弗雷德里克-米斯特拉（Frédéric Mistral）在马亚纳的故居朝圣，并赞同诗人的观点，即 "对小国的爱不会从对大国的爱中抽离，相反会增加它"。85 贝当向其致敬的民族英雄，因为他们复活了一个被打败的、分裂的法国，使其对抗占领军，并在此过程中牺牲了自己，他们来自大革命之前的历史。对圣女贞德的崇拜在1942年5月10日达到了高潮，全国各地的年轻人尤其参与了庆祝活动。在里昂，青年商会、法兰西伙伴、童子军、导游和天主教青年的两万名年轻人听到青年部长把圣女贞德作为拯救国家的人，就像贝当元帅现在做的那样。三个月后，1942年8月30日，法国战斗军团的代表们聚集在克莱蒙费朗附近的格戈维亚高原上，在高卢酋长韦辛格托里克斯（Vercingétorix）于公元前52年与占领国罗马人作战并据说建立了法兰西国家的地方纪念他们的两周年。他们带来了来自法国及其帝国各地的泥土，象征着国家的统一，并向贝当致敬，贝当就像Vercingétorix一样，为国家的独立和统一牺牲了自己的人身。
黑色传说和废弃的坟墓
兴登堡和贝当的神话轨迹之间最明显的相似之处之一是，最终他们都因与阿道夫-希特勒合作而声名狼藉。德国和法国在战后修订的图标几乎是相同的：两张握手的照片成为每个国家最持久的视觉代码。
兴登堡在 "波茨坦之日 "与鞠躬的希特勒握手的照片，是1945年后德国学校教科书和百科全书中传播最广的历史图片之一88（见图3）。纳粹分子自己也称赞兴登堡和希特勒在波茨坦的卫戍教堂内的握手，象征着普鲁士的过去和国家社会主义的未来的 "联姻"。相比之下，希特勒在教堂外向年迈的兴登堡鞠躬的画面成为战后西德的不朽标志。因为这张照片遮住了观众，几乎完全聚焦在这两个人身上，所以它传达了一个关于纳粹接管的个人责任的信息。由于战后的观察家们也意识到，希特勒在1933年3月后的行为使他作为 "卑微的仆人 "的姿态受到了嘲弄，这张照片突出了纳粹的虚伪和诱惑力。它表明，兴登堡--象征着（双重）老一辈精英的轻信--被纳粹领导层骗了。
这种象征意义可以在德国和战时法国之间转移。1940年10月24日，贝当与纳粹领导人在蒙托瓦河畔的握手，无疑是维希法国最持久的画面之一（见图4）。由希特勒的官方摄影师海因里希-霍夫曼（Heinrich Hoffmann）拍摄，并首次在德国媒体上发表，《Völkischer Beobachter》称赞这一姿态 "严肃而庄重"。91 而在法国，这次握手是贝当的 "黑色传奇 "的起源，人们认为他不是国家的拯救者，而是叛徒。他所说的 "合作 "是指与德国人进行谈判，以缓解占领区的状况，但这一姿态立即被视为与魔鬼的契约。一位流亡在纽约的法国士兵写道，贝当现在被称为 "贝当堡"--在兴登堡之后。
尽管与魔鬼签订了协议，但对贝当元帅的崇拜在整个维希时期仍然保持着很大的活力。首先，据说贝当在玩 "双重游戏"，与希特勒谈判，但也与丘吉尔保持联系。其次，许多民众的不满与其说是针对贝当，不如说是针对维希政府和皮埃尔-拉瓦尔等部长，后者在1942年11月后成为政府首脑，让贝当成为国家元首。正如兴登堡很少受到直接攻击一样，昂热警方在1942年3月报告说，"贝当元帅的个人形象总体上仍然不受批评"。
看来他的威望确实比以往任何时候都要高。民众钦佩他的勇气和人格力量，而且似乎对他更有信心，因为他们知道他在尽可能地捍卫国家的独立93。
第三，一个强大的谣言认为，贝当和戴高乐正在共同反对德国的占领，一个在法国境内，另一个在境外。解放期间被任命为昂热共和国专员的米歇尔-德布雷（Michel Debré）报告说，当地的贵族们 "把他们的儿子和戴高乐放在一起，并把贝当的画像放在他们的起居室里。"94 贝当在1944年4月26日，即诺曼底登陆前六个星期前往巴黎，这表明了他的持久人气。他看望了在巴黎被英军轰炸的伤员，受到了巴黎大主教的欢迎，并在市政厅前受到了一万多人的欢迎，他们激动得哑口无言，许多人还流下了眼泪，然后孩子们唱起了：Maréchal, nous voilà!
这一切都在解放时发生了变化，这标志着合法的法国对真正的法国进行了报复。共和国被恢复了，随之而来的是宣布维希政权无效的共和制合法性。从1940年6月10日的呼吁到1944年8月25日走下香榭丽舍大街，戴高乐宣称自己是法国的唯一代言人。贝当于1945年7月受审，被指控背信弃义地将法国交给了敌人，并从共和国手中篡夺了权力。贝当元帅 "被判处死刑，然后被送到旺代海岸外的大西洋上的叶岛（Ile d'Yeu）安度晚年。1951年7月23日，他在那里去世，享年95岁。
兴登堡和贝当战后的外围埋葬地有力地反映了两人在德国和法国公众意识中的边缘化。两人都没有（或仍然）埋葬在他的神话开始的地方--杜奥蒙骨髓库和坦能堡纪念馆--1927年贝当和兴登堡在跨国神话竞争的时刻打开了它们的外壳。兴登堡的遗体原本被纳粹埋在坦能堡纪念馆内，在经过波茨坦和图林根盐矿的长途跋涉后，最终被埋在了马尔堡的伊丽莎白教堂。1946年8月，在一次秘密的夜间行动中，兴登堡的战后墓地被挖出，这与纳粹在1934年为他举办的葬礼上的盛况形成了鲜明的对比。紧挨着教堂主入口的左边，这里几乎没有灯光。虽然兴登堡和他妻子的名字被刻在墓碑上，但由于坟墓的高度较低，而且该区域被绳索封住，所以从游客的角度几乎无法看清。参观者必须仔细研究教堂的信息手册，才能知道谁在他们面前安息。
战后对兴登堡的重新解读不仅仅表现在视觉或空间方面。战后早期的历史学和公共话语越来越多地将兴登堡定义为 "德国民主的殡葬者"，作为希特勒的 "先驱 "或 "镫骨持有人"--一个有点悲剧的人物，他帮助纳粹上台，尽管他有不同程度的个人责任或罪责：只有当这种缓慢的毒药从德国人的身体里被排出，一个民主的德国才能够蓬勃发展。
- 这种对兴登堡的重新解释和诋毁，与贝当的 "黑色传奇 "有着明显的相似之处，但也不乏歉意的倾向。暗藏毒药 "的修辞和道德 "净化 "的需要，使这个神话被打上了与德国民族身体格格不入的标签。关注总统的个人缺点（据称是缺乏政治理解力、衰老、智力有限）为回避对纳粹统治至关重要的民众同意问题提供了机会。一个衰老的兴登堡和他的一小撮利己的顾问们把德国人民交给希特勒的概念，正好符合战后把纳粹独裁统治视为 "历史事故 "的范式100。
然而，与此同时，在多元化的联邦共和国，对兴登堡的放弃并不彻底。虽然在东德也存在着矛盾的记忆，但东德国家限制了这些记忆的表达空间；兴登堡作为腐败的 "资产阶级-帝国主义 "制度的主要代表出现。他的名字被从所有的路牌上抹去，他的纪念碑也被拆除。101 相反，在西德，无数的街道至今还保留着他的名字。也不乏像兴登堡的前新闻助理格哈德-舒尔茨-普法尔策（Gerhard Schultze-Pfaelzer）这样的志愿者，根据他自己的说法，他试图 "尽一切努力......防止兴登堡作为一个绅士、善良和明智的人的形象在纳粹浪潮的恶水中沉沦"。102 当《法兰克福汇报》在1950年代中期发表了一系列批评兴登堡的文章时，该报收到了异常多的读者来信，信中表达了作者 "痛苦的激动，因为有人在试图触碰他们神圣的东西 "103。
更重要的是，在某些有影响力的团体中，存在着一股强烈的兴登堡崇拜的暗流。兴登堡成为德国被驱逐者的纪念地，而被驱逐者是战后西德社会中一支相当有组织的力量。104 向兴登堡在马尔堡的坟墓献花的许多访客都是被驱逐者，他们感到与 "希玛特的拯救者 "有共同的命运联系；他的遗体也被 "驱逐 "出东方，他的家庭失去了财产。这种情绪不仅仅是那些经历过兴登堡总统任期的人所共有。一家右翼出版社在1961年出版的一本流行的兴登堡传记，明确地旨在培养新一代的信徒，并试图通过提及德国在东部失去的领土来保持对兴登堡的记忆：
这口棺材会不会再次被抬上年轻的肩膀，会不会如这位 "老先生 "所愿，在诺伊代克的树下找到最后的安息之地？一本关于兴登堡的书，除了引用他的东普鲁士故乡和德意志帝国的统一之外，不能不说是一个结局。
尽管这些努力引起了一些观众的共鸣，特别是在20世纪50年代和60年代，兴登堡并没有像贝当在法国那样继续吸引德国人的想象。由他的辩护律师雅克-伊索尔尼（Jacques Isorni）领导的一小部分忠实支持者，包括维希的前军事和文职官员，策划了对贝当的崇拜的复兴。他被描绘成一个像基督一样的殉道者，以应对可怕的不公正和忘恩负义。人们将其与路易十六的审判、拿破仑在圣赫勒拿岛的流放，甚至与基督的激情相比较。伊索尔尼谈到了 "法国的罪恶"，贝当的 "痛苦"，他的 "髑髅地"，以及 "一个年近百岁的老人的可憎的殉道 "107。
争取贝当解放的团体在他死后将自己改名为 "保卫贝当元帅记忆协会"。该协会有两个目标：第一，重启对他的审判，以便为他平反；第二，将他的遗体从叶岛运走，重新安葬在杜奥蒙的老兵中间。当拿破仑的遗体被带回荣军院安放时，贝当的遗体将被重新安葬在杜奥蒙，安葬在那些爱他并在凡尔登战场上牺牲的士兵-农民中间。这样一来，贝当-凡尔登的神话就会盖过贝当-维奇的神话。同时，叶岛成为那些继续纪念他的人的朝圣之地，新的一代人加入了凡尔登老兵和维希青年的行列。1973年，一群支持者最终采取了直接行动，将贝当的棺材从叶岛搬走，但只搬到了巴黎郊区克利希的一个车库里。
那些宣扬对贝当的崇拜的人认为，"抵抗运动 "已经成为一个小集团，利用它的资历来建立合法和权力的垄断地位。他们认为，贝当也曾抵抗过德国人，每天用匕首抵住喉咙与德国人的要求作斗争，在戴高乐从国外为解放法国人民而努力的时候，贝当仍然在法国人民中间。抵抗运动英雄雷米（Rémy）上校在1950年打破常规，认为1940年6月法国需要 "两根弦"，"贝当的'弦'和戴高乐的'弦'一样多"。109 这些观点死灰复燃，1985年，在贝当受审40周年之际，《青年报》对贝当的遗产进行了重新评估，引发了读者来信的热潮，他们认为贝当是第二根弦，手持盾牌，而戴高乐则挥舞着剑，在德国和英国之间玩着双重游戏。许多加入抵抗运动的人一开始就忠于维希，其中包括弗朗索瓦-密特朗，他从战俘营逃出来，先是为维希组织战俘，后来又为抵抗运动组织战俘。从1984年起，作为共和国总统，他每年都会在停战日向位于Ile d'Yeu 1984的贝当墓送去花圈，并在死前坦率地透露他对贝当的崇敬。
然而，1987年后，维希和犹太人的问题在政治舞台上爆发，对贝当的崇拜造成了打击，并没有恢复。对盖世太保首领克劳斯-巴比（Klaus Barbie）、维希警察局长勒内-布斯凯（René Bousquet）和里昂民兵领袖保罗-图维耶（Paul Touvier）的诉讼，使维希和贝当被指控参与了大屠杀。112 1992年7月16日，纪念1942年维希将犹太人驱逐出巴黎的犹太组织要求密特朗承认法国国家在迫害犹太人方面的责任并停止向贝当的坟墓送花环。他拒绝了第一项要求，认为共和国不应对维希的所作所为负责，但同意从1993年起停止对贝当的纪念。
1995年希拉克总统承认法国国家在大屠杀中的作用后，"贝当的罪行 "不再是停战或废除共和国，而是对法国犹太人的毁灭。他的崇拜实际上已经结束了。然而，仍然有一个残存的神话，它是分散的、无序的，但却是深刻的、忠诚的，它拒绝了1992年后对维希的 "现在主义 "的看法，就像1945年一样，并培养了对救世主的崇拜，他将法国从1916、1917、1934和1940年的失败和混乱中拯救出来。1997年在昂热地区进行的两次采访说明了这种崇拜。维希地区省长的女儿波尔-德-博蒙特（Paule de Beaumont）说，她的父亲 "完全支持贝当的理论，即你必须留在法国以保护法国人民"，并攻击那些指控元帅犯有反人类罪的人。更为尖锐的是，一位来自索米尔的葡萄种植者在1940年曾在法国军队中作战，他简单地宣称："贝当救了我的命 "114。
结论
如果说神话人物为我们提供了他们所崇拜的社会的 "集体无意识 "的重要线索，那么在两次世界大战的时代，法国人和德国人都有许多隐藏的恐惧和欲望。115魏玛共和国是一个新成立的国家，正在寻找政治合法性，并为军事失败和社会政治斗争所困扰，它不仅是 "政治神话的完美孵化器"，而且在第三共和国，贝当崇拜也找到了充足的养料。战时危机四伏的德国经常被认为特别容易受到政治救世主和强大领导力概念的影响。117 然而，贝当神话在法国也同样强烈和持久，这表明法国人也很容易对 "强者 "和 "救世主 "投入信任。至少在这个意义上，德国的战时道路似乎并不那么特别。同样地，贝当的维希也不再是共和国和国家的无缝叙事中的一个反常现象，而是可以被重新纳入一个在国家危机时期寻找 "永恒的法国 "的替代故事中。
围绕兴登堡和贝当的神话不仅有许多共同的主题和轨迹，这些主题和轨迹对当代观察家来说并不陌生，而且还有跨国的联系。两人都是在关键的防御性战役中 "拯救 "了自己的国家后，从相对默默无闻的位置一举成名。他们在坦能堡和杜奥蒙建立了这些战役的纪念馆，并从中获益。然后，在新的危机发生时，每个人都被从退休状态召唤出来，作为政治领袖拯救他们的国家，兴登堡是魏玛共和国的总统，贝当是部长，然后是法国国家元首。
他们的神话既来自下面，也来自上面，他们都在竞争中脱颖而出，分别成为德国和法国美德的有力和可塑的象征。兴登堡的稳重和方形下巴，贝当的挺拔姿态和清澈的蓝眼睛，都体现了一种特殊的男性气质。与兴登堡相比，贝当的崇拜中更多地体现了人性，但两位叙事者的核心理念都是殉道者式的自我牺牲奉献和尽职尽责的服务，他们的崇拜者被期望对此表示感谢。他们的巨大年龄被重塑为一种优势，而不是一种障碍：他们被比喻为抵御时间摧残的物质--海洋中的坚固岩石，森林中的古老橡树。他们的神话与来自国家历史深处的传说联系在一起，这些传说的英雄主义现在在他们身上得到了体现：赫尔曼和韦辛格托里克斯，弗里德里希-巴巴罗萨和圣女贞德，俾斯麦--但不是拿破仑。
虽然兴登堡和贝当都是政治人物，但每个人都公开表示自己徘徊在一个高高在上、无党派的领域中。虽然两人在个人政治信仰上都处于中间偏右的位置，但他们都可以依靠狂热的共和主义崇拜者。两人的追随者都具有惊人的异质性；对两人的崇敬都不是严格意义上的单一政治阵营、阶级、性别、宗教团体或地区。它经常被表述为来自政治阶层之外的支持，甚至是狂热，在国家的深处，在退伍军人和战俘、儿童、年轻人和妇女中。
最终，这两个人都与希特勒合作，并协助摧毁了使他们重新获得权力的共和国。在德国的情况下，这有助于纳粹通过赢得更多温和的右翼德国人而巩固其统治。在法国的情况下，它使民众接受了德国的占领。在波茨坦和蒙托伊尔的握手导致了关于这些领导人的 "黑色传说 "的阐述。然而，在这两种情况下，都存在着另一个更深层次的神话，它将兴登堡和贝当塑造成失败和革命的混乱中的救星，实际上是反对纳粹主义的堡垒。坦能堡和凡尔登的胜利者的神话从未被后来的政治错误完全推翻过。在这种情况下，他们的年龄又被拿来作为借口。兴登堡被描绘成 "活了两年的悲剧 "119，他和贝当都越来越衰老。
对他们的崇拜的持久性也许是这两种现象之间最突出的相似之处。两人的神话在他们满足了追随者的期望后还能延续很久，因为两人至少在满足信徒对他们的期望的同时，也让人失望。事实证明，对这两个神话的认同并不像马克斯-韦伯的 "魅力权威 "模式120所暗示的那样短暂，而是更加持久。
韦伯坚持认为，领导人必须一次又一次地证明自己的价值，以维持他的追随者，而这里讨论的两个案例最引人注目的是，贝当和兴登堡的神话都在一系列的矛盾和不任命中幸存。也许他们的神话与韦伯的 "传统权威 "模式有异曲同工之妙，根据这一模式，父亲的形象因其年龄和性别而被赋予合法性；这样的领导人不必每天证明自己，而是占据了一个既神圣又受习俗约束的位置。兴登堡和贝当的神话与其说是空置的投影屏幕，"英雄的框架 "或 "空白的图像"，随时可以印上他们的追随者对救世主的概念，121不如说是不断变化的模型，一代又一代的追随者从这些模型中创造他们所能创造的东西。
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european history quarterly 49
Flawed Saviours: the Myths of Hindenburg and Pétain
Anna von der Goltz and Robert Gildea
Magdalen College, Oxford and University of Oxford
abstract
Although Hindenburg and Pétain emerged from very different historical traditions, one monarchical and authoritarian, the other democratic and republican, their trajectories and cults in the twentieth century in fact had much in common. Both emerged as military heroes, saving the fatherland in 1914 in iconic victories, and both were subsequently called back as political saviours as the Weimar and Third Republics ran into difficulties and collapsed. The status and reputation of each was enhanced by a cult that was both manufactured and spontaneous, ranging widely across the political spectrum and reaching deep into the body politic. The cults drew on powerful images of solidity and ancient heroes. Both leaders were, however, flawed, compromising with Nazi power, and they were buried far from the sites of their victories. In spite of these flaws, however, the cults of Hindenburg and Pétain have been remarkably adaptable and enduring.
key words: cult, Hindenburg, myth, Pétain
On 18 September 1927, nearly nine years after the end of the First World War, France and Germany inaugurated the shells of their two largest war monuments. The memorials in the French village of Douaumont and the East Prussian town of Hohenstein commemorated two of the war’s most famous battles respectively: Verdun and Tannenberg. The Ossuary of Douaumont, containing the remains of thousands of war dead, paid homage to the resilience the French had exhibited for 10 months at Verdun – the ‘meat grinder’ – throughout 1916.1 The Battle of Tannenberg of August 1914 may have paled in comparison to Verdun in statistical terms, but was no less important for the Germans psychologically.2 The colossal memorial structure heralded one of the few decisive German victories of the First World War. Because Tannenberg had been fought on German soil against Russian invaders it was also central to maintaining Germany’s claim of fighting a defensive war.3
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The unveiling of these two national memorials made a significant contribution to codifying French and German war memory. Both commemorated battles fought on each country’s own soil that were won in spite of an inferiority in numbers. And both were unveiled by each country’s greatest war hero and living myth: Marshal Philippe Pétain and Field Marshal and Reich President Paul von Hindenburg. That the ceremonies took place in the presence of the ‘Vainqueur du Verdun’ and the ‘Sieger von Tannenberg’ on exactly the same non-anniversary day – 18 September 1927 – was unlikely to have been coincidental.4 The parallel staging of these events when only the buildings’ shells had been completed hints at the extent to which France and Germany – and Pétain and Hindenburg in particular – were in trans- national mythical competition with each other when it came to commemorating the Great War.
Both Hindenburg and Pétain clearly had more present political agendas in mind when celebrating their past victories. The near-octogenarian German President skilfully seized the moment to step up his public fight against the accusation of German war guilt.5 In Douaumont, Pétain was equally adamant that the French unity of wartime marked a stark contrast to the hedonism and individualism of the interwar Third Republic. According to the 70-year-old Marshal, the ‘spirit of Verdun’ had to remain the foundation of France’s national life.6
The similarities between Hindenburg and Pétain neither begin nor end on that day. As we will see, the mythical narratives surrounding each man were strikingly similar in terms of their genesis, content, development, function, historical conse- quences, and the ways in which they impacted on both men’s career trajectories.7 Pétain, who emerged as the French hero of the First World War, would be called back as the saviour of the French, first as Minister of War in 1934 and then as the leader of the Vichy government in 1940.8 Hindenburg, whose image as a national saviour had equally originated in wartime, was elected President in 1925 to salvage Germany from internal strife and was re-elected to save the republic from Nazism in 1932. After 1945, both men were re-cast as anti-heroes, because they had supposedly ‘delivered’ their people to the Nazis.
In spite of this remarkable overlap the myths surrounding Hindenburg and Pétain have never been compared systematically. Some scholars have even denied the existence of structural parallels outright.9 When one considers Hindenburg’s presidency, and his mythical reputation, in particular, as a bridge between the Hohenzollern monarchy and the Nazi dictatorship, his long lasting and intense veneration appears equally undemocratic. It may even start to look like a further stride on Germany’s ‘special path’.10 By contrast, the dictatorship and cult of Pétain have commonly been portrayed as an aberration from the history of the French Republic and nation since 1789, because of its undemocratic nature, whereas arguably it needs to be placed in the context of other ‘strong men’ who have taken charge in moments of crisis, appealing to the values and continuity of ‘eternal France’.11 A comparison between the myths of Pétain and Hindenburg in a period in
von der Goltz & Gildea: Flawed Saviours 44
which France and Germany are not frequently put side by side promises fruitful insights into the common language of hero cults beyond national borders, and may even begin to uncover more far reaching parallels between France and Germany in the era of the two world wars.
Stepping onto the Mythical Stage
At the outbreak of the First World War both Hindenburg and Pétain were relatively unknown. While the latter would not reach national fame for a few years, Hindenburg became a household name in Germany within weeks of the first shots being fired.
When Hindenburg, a Prussian aristocrat born in Posen on 2 October 1847, retired in 1911 at the age of 64, he could look back on a successful and eventful military career. The German public, however, took no notice. That changed almost overnight when he was called back to active service to lead Germany’s 8th army corps in East Prussia, and was credited with masterminding the victory against Russia at Tannenberg in late August 1914. The public enthusiasm for Tannenberg can only be understood against the background of a collective sense of victimhood, the seeds of which German propagandists had sown in pre-war years through stoking up Russophobia and the fear of encirclement.
As early as 29 August 1914 a biographical sketch of Hindenburg was circulated to all major German newspapers.12 On this basis, the liberal Berliner Tageblatt was quick to offer insights into his character: ‘the 67-year-old [sic] gentleman’ had grabbed his ‘tried and tested sword’ with ‘iron energy’ and ‘brandished it with the same calm and cold-bloodedness against the Russians’ that he had displayed against the French 44 years earlier.13 The notion of the ‘cool’ and ‘calm’ Hindenburg that would remain a pillar of his myth was thus born as early as August 1914, finding evocative expression in the image of a rock in the ocean – the ultimate stoical object.14 According to one German poet, the name ‘Hindenburg’ – the catchy short form of the much longer ‘von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg’ – sounded ‘dark, dull, heavy and German’. Soon after, the first images began to circulate and matched the name: he was no ‘elegant, dashing’ man, but a ‘heavy, mighty . . . General with a square head’.15 Hindenburg thus embodied a specific type of masculinity; he was no youth- ful or athletic warrior, but symbolized virile gravitas through his rectangular features and broad frame. His sang-froid was also a typically masculine virtue that contrasted with the alleged ‘fickle, womanish changes of mind’16 of General Erich Ludendorff, Hindenburg’s right-hand man.
Myths and mythical hero figures are rarely new inventions, since it is easier for them to gain potency if they correspond to the structure of a society’s imagination and build upon semantic and semiotic traditions.17 A number of older legends fed into the Hindenburg narrative, magnifying its potency. That he had traded his comfortable retirement for active service was crucial: he had displayed the very willingness to
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make sacrifices asked of all enlisted men. This alleged self-sacrificial devotion to the community would become a key component of his myth, building upon Christian ideas of martyrdom that lay at the core of traditional hero epics.18 His strong sense of duty which, as Hindenburg insisted, had driven him to serve, would also become an integral part of his myth, in so doing resting on a fundamentally Prussian-German ideal.19 Furthermore, the newly minted Field Marshal was soon likened to ‘Barbarossa’, the medieval Hohenstaufen Emperor Friedrich I, who, legend had it, slept in the Kyffhäuser Mountain until he would one day return to resurrect the German Empire. Hindenburg’s quiet life in Hanover in the pre-war years, his victori- ous return to active service in 1914, and the widespread enthusiasm sparked by Tannenberg, explain why Hindenburg’s appearance on the public stage was hailed as a Barbarossa-style return.20 The Hermann myth equally intensified Hindenburg’s sudden adulation. Just as Hermann had fought the Romans triumphantly, Hindenburg was now allegedly uniting the Germans against the Slavonic onslaught.21 And finally, the Bismarck cult no doubt boosted Hindenburg’s glorifica- tion – Hindenburg, who resembled the ‘Iron Chancellor’ physically, was often hailed as a ‘new Bismarck’.22
The construction of the Hindenburg myth was not orchestrated chiefly by German propagandists. In fact, the necessary infrastructure was not even in place in the first months of the war to engineer a large-scale publicity campaign of that sort.23 Once the public passion for their war hero had caught fire, however, the German government happily stoked the flames. At the same time, the German population did much to exalt Hindenburg to mythical heights from below. His followers cherished in him the very values needed to survive the first truly modern war in European history: deter- mination, fighting skill, equanimity, a willingness for sacrifice, and a sense of duty to the fatherland. The catchphrase ‘Hindenburg will sort it out’ captured the idea that despite all the hardship suffered at home and at the front, everything would be alright if one put one’s trust in his heroic qualities.24 This represented an active coping strategy, creating the sense of optimism needed to endure a prolonged conflict originally promised to last a few months.
Within a few years of the outbreak of war, Hindenburg had turned into Germany’s supreme symbolic figure, rising above all competition and eclipsing even his monarch, Wilhelm II. His right-hand man Erich Ludendorff was admired equally, but lacked both Hindenburg’s equanimity and the human touch that permitted his myth to transcend the military sphere.25 When the position of Erich von Falkenhayn was no longer tenable in August 1916, the Kaiser had no choice but to appoint Hindenburg as his Chief of the General Staff – at the same time as Marshal Pétain was entering the mythical stage in France. As a result, the Field Marshal became ever more ubiquitous in German public life. People read about him in the papers, saw his picture in the illustrated press, watched him at the cinema, sent postcards and purchased products adorned with his iconic portrait, hung his framed picture on their walls, celebrated his birthday, and sang his praise in schools.26
von der Goltz & Gildea: Flawed Saviours 44
Like Hindenburg, Philippe Pétain went into retirement before the First World War, in April 1914. A mere colonel, he would not have figured in anything more than regimental annals had not war broken out in August. Unlike Hindenburg, he was not an aristocratic army officer but from a family of peasant farmers in the north of France. The French officer corps had long been open to non-nobles, but it was dominated by royalists and Bonapartists down to the Dreyfus Affair. Pétain was Jesuit educated, but accepted the Republic and benefited from the meritocracy it practised. In August 1914 he was promoted to the rank of General and in February 1916 was given the command at Verdun, the frontier fortress subjected to a German bombardment of unheard of ferocity and on the verge of giving way. Although he had to be summoned from his mistress’s bed at the Hôtel Terminus near the Gare du Nord he was at his post at the town hall of Souilly, behind Verdun, by midnight the same day.27 He held the line, emphasized resistance rather than attack, and organized what became known as ‘the sacred road’ bringing up supplies and reinforcements. Verdun was a founding moment for the French and for Pétain in particular, the greatest defensive battle on France’s frontier. It created the legend of the indomitable poilu or soldier-peasant dug in to secure his own land with that of France.28 He was passed over for commander-in-chief in December 1916, when General Nivelle was appointed over his head, but the costly failure of Nivelle’s offensive at the Chemin des Dames in April 1917 provoked a wave of mutinies. Pétain was now brought in as commander- in-chief on the Western Front and set about restoring military discipline. There were 50 executions, but Pétain’s main approach was to lift army morale by a combination of material and psychological measures: regular leave, rest periods, better rations. Above all he encouraged his troops personally, visiting 90 units in a few months, restoring their courage and motivation and acquiring the reputation of a father figure.29 President Poincaré presented Pétain with his Marshal’s baton at a parade in newly liberated Metz on 8 December 1918, bringing together the two elements of the myth. ‘Henceforth the years 1916 [Verdun] and 1917 [the army saved] are joined in a single crown of laurels’, announced Poincaré. ‘For everyone he is “the victor of Verdun” and “the saviour of the army”. He was at once the well-loved commander of his men and the charismatic symbol of French victory’.30
From time to time, in moments of crisis, France looked for a saviour. In 1799 and
1848 it was a Bonaparte who delivered France from international danger, civil war and a regime that was descending into chaos. The trouble with Bonapartes, however, was that they overthrew the republic they were supposed to strengthen and led the country to military disaster at Waterloo and Sedan. The Great War finally embedded the Third Republic after decades of challenge from royalist and Bonapartist pretenders and created a cohort of republican generals who might one day save the country without threatening the regime or provoking renewed war. Pétain was not the only military leader to emerge with honour from the war. At the victory parade of 14 July 1919 he descended the Champs-Elysées boot-to-boot with Marshal Foch, commander-in-chief on the Western Front in 1918 and generalissimo of the Allied war
444 European History Quarterly, 9.
effort. Foch, however, quarrelled with the head of the government, Clemenceau, over the peace treaty, and was overruled in his demand to annex the left bank of the Rhine. Foch saw himself as the new Napoleon, and breathed the Emperor’s name in hushed tones at the ceremony to mark the centenary of Napoleon’s death at the Invalides in May 1921. Napoleon, however, the master of offensive war and gravedigger of the Republic, was not in vogue after 1918. Pétain, by contrast, had favoured a dogged, defensive war which economized on lives lost, and he had the reputation of a soldier of peasant origins who understood the strengths and weaknesses of his troops. He embodied the same values of tenacity, patriotic duty and spirit of sacrifice as Hindenburg. It was thus Pétain rather than Foch who was appointed to the top position of vice-president of the Conseil Superieur de la Guerre, under the minister of war, in 1920.31
Returning to the Mythical Stage
First Act
Hindenburg never really left the mythical stage. His myth survived German military defeat in 1918 – a defeat his leadership had promised to avert. Hindenburg’s decision to ‘stay at this post’, after Ludendorff was dismissed in October 1918 and the Kaiser abdicated on 9 November 1918, was interpreted firmly within the framework of his mythical narrative: dutiful service and ‘superhuman’ sacrifice.32 The Field Marshal himself shared this assessment and would later demand to be compensated for his ‘martyrdom’ of 1918.33 The notion of the sacrificial and martyr-like hero Hindenburg who had repeatedly suffered for the good of his country, and of a debt being owed to him as a result, would surface repeatedly throughout his political career, mirroring Pétain’s subsequent rhetoric of donating the ‘gift of his person’ to France.
Crucially, the Hindenburg myth survived in 1918/19, because it still corresponded to the social expectations of large sections of German society: to salvage something positive from war and to recreate a sense of order, tranquillity and continuity after the disruption of wartime.34 Recreating order and preventing chaos were especially important to the democratic left whose leaders put their faith in the old Imperial elites, especially the army, rather than in the revolutionary councils to realize these aims.35 The man who had helped Germany withstand the Russian onslaught in 1914 was re- invented as the hero who ‘kept back the waves of turmoil firm as a rock in the ocean’.36 Years later, the Social Democratic politician Gustav Noske, who had acquired notoriety for crushing the Spartacus uprising in January 1919, would still hail Hindenburg as an ‘imperturbable dam’ who had kept back the ‘floods’ of revolu- tion.37 The Hindenburg myth survived the war, braced with the added narrative layer of having ‘saved’ the country from even greater chaos and disorder.
The Field Marshal never retreated entirely from public life after his retirement.38 His myth, therefore, did not have to be revived in the presidential contest of 1925.39 The most widespread poster of the campaign showed a drawing of the Field
von der Goltz & Gildea: Flawed Saviours 44
Figure 1
Marshal’s iconic head on a white background with a handwritten caption that simply read ‘The Saviour’ (see Figure 1). A poster not even giving Hindenburg’s name was sufficient to communicate the message of the right-wing parties supporting his candicacy: ‘hope and trust would return after many years of bitter disappointment, and . . . the people’s hero would save the Fatherland for the second time’.40 Many Germans responded intuitively to this message. According to one Frau Gramm, an ‘ordinary, simple woman’ from Berlin, who had ‘lost everything’ during hyperinfla- tion, ‘our Hindenburg will bring about the revaluation of mortgages and then we will be better off’.41 Voting for Hindenburg did not appear as exercising a democratic right, but rather as settling a debt, as the fulfilment of a duty to one man – the natural expression of a mystical union between Hindenburg and the German people.42
Nationalist election material succeeded in portraying Hindenburg as the repub- lic’s antithesis. His election would bring about ‘the Tannenberg of the German spirit’; he would set an educational example for young Germans to overcome the religious, political and social fragmentation of the people.43 The post-war years of near civil war, hyperinflation, and perceived international humiliation had obviously taken their toll. At a time when the parliamentary system seemingly failed to meet expecta- tions of economic, social and political stability, voters fell back on a coping strategy rehearsed during the years of wartime deprivation – opting to trust Hindenburg ‘to sort it out’. His mythical allure thus helped him capture, of all things, the highest office of the very state as whose antithesis he had campaigned.
Crucially, left-wing reluctance to attack vigorously Germany’s most venerated figure substantially weakened and confused the republican campaign. As the
446 European History Quarterly, 9.
Vorwärts wrote ‘our fight is not against him. It is against the irresponsible schemers and demagogues’ alleged to be behind his candidacy.44 This timidity in attacking their political opponent was the result of more than a decade of substantial cross- party veneration of Hindenburg and contributed in no small measure to his victory. On 26 April 1925, he beat his opponent Wilhelm Marx by more than 900,000 votes and was sworn into office less than three weeks later.
Because Hindenburg’s election came in the wake of a period of ‘relative stabiliza- tion’ of Weimar German politics and society, it was tempting to credit the new President with easing political tensions and bolstering the republic.45 The recovery ‘not least seemed to be founded in the tranquil, confidence-building security originat- ing from the President’s house’, one democratic politician observed.46 Within one year of Hindenburg’s taking office, the acute left-wing journalist Carl von Ossietzky noted that the bourgeois republican press was weaving new wreaths around his head. While the older legendary tale had focused on his military genius, the future Nobel laureate now detected an evolving republican ‘Hindenburg Legend’, according to which he was ‘a cornerstone of Weimar politics’ – just as he had been a ‘rock’ of stability in 1918/19.47 By 1930, the liberal Frankfurter Zeitung praised the forces of the right explicitly for having nominated their ‘best man’. ‘It was good that the right and not the left won the presidential elections’.48 This candid admission by arguably the most prestigious republican newspaper shows clearly how the strikingly polyva- lent Hindenburg myth crossed Weimar’s deep political fault-lines – albeit without ever endearing his different acolytes to each other.
Philippe Pétain had to wait much longer than Hindenburg before he was recalled as a saviour. Military men rather lost their aura in 1920s France. ‘The Marshal was a great man who so far as I am concerned died in 1925’, said Charles de Gaulle in 1945.49 After 1930, however, the French Third Republic increasingly looked like Weimar, on the brink of economic chaos and civil war. It was threatened from the left in the form of Marxist communism and socialism, and from the right in the shape of fascism. On 6 February 1934 fascist leagues demonstrated outside the Chamber of Deputies and brought down the government. A so-called government of national defence was formed under Gaston Doumergue; Pétain, aged 77, was called to serve as minister of war.
This government, like so many before it, lasted for only a few months. When it fell in November 1934, the mass-circulation Petit Journal ran a poll among its readers asking who they would choose if they had to choose a dictator – to restore the author- ity of the state, yet be unlike the despots who ruled Germany and Russia. Over 200,000 readers wrote in and Pétain topped the poll ahead of Pierre Laval, Gaston Doumergue and Colonel de La Roque of the veterans’ Croix de Feu movement.50
Against this background a more concerted campaign in support of Pétain was orchestrated by Gustave Hervé, who had been an anti-militarist before 1914 and a chauvinist since. In his pamphlet of 1935, C’est Pétain qu’il nous faut! he argued that the Marshal was ‘the providential man who has never wanted in our country at tragic
von der Goltz & Gildea: Flawed Saviours 44
moments of its glorious and painful history’. A majority of pro-revision candidates standing in the 1936 elections should give Pétain a dictatorship of six months to draft the constitution of ‘an authoritarian republic on a corporatist basis’. The case for Pétain was that he was not a Bonaparte who would usurp the republic and drag France into another bloody war. Instead he was a saviour on the Hindenburg model, and the comparison was explicitly made, highlighting the transnational links between the two myths. Anticipating the argument that Pétain was too old to run the country, Hervé observed that ‘old Marshal Hindenburg was older than Pétain when he agreed to stand in the Weimar Republic’s presidential elections of 1925, to rally all patriotic Germans’. Would Pétain launch a military coup? ‘You launch a coup at 28, not at Pétain’s age. Marshal Hindenburg did not have a coup to bring back the Hohenzollerns he loved.’ Finally, did Pétain mean war? ‘Who could believe that Pétain, the leader least inclined to pointless bloody combat, the most attentive to the condition of his soldiers, and the most humane, was a bloodthirsty monster?’ On the contrary, said Hervé, covered with the glory of Verdun he was the best placed to ‘shake the hand that Hitler has been holding out for us for two years, in the name of the living and the dead of the Great War’.51
Five or six years before he took power in 1940, therefore, Pétain was being promoted as a possible saviour. He was more dashing than Hindenburg, more of a ladies’ man, but much was made of his erect posture, his gravitas and his far- sightedness. Jérôme Carcopino, historian of Ancient Rome and later Pétain’s education minister, commented on ‘his eyes, of a marble lightness, in a face of harmonious regularity’.52 Pétain’s appeal bypassed the politicians and resonated with a deeper France, an eternal France, represented by the land of their ancestors for which peasant soldiers had fought and died, and by national heroes and heroines who long predated the upstart Bonapartes. He paid homage to the dead of Verdun once more in 1932 when the Ossuary of Douaumont was finally inaugurated, and unveil- ing the war memorial of Capoulet-Juniac (Ariège) in 1935 he declared that during the war the peasantry had ensured the ‘solidity’ of the infantry, ‘retaining the passionate commitment to fight so long as the enemy trampled on French soil. In the darkest hours – I will recall it before this monument’, said Pétain, ‘it was the calm and determined look of the peasant which sustained my confidence’.53 His cult of Joan of Arc was also explained by her peasant tenacity. ‘Joan of Arc was a peasant of France’, he told Churchill’s emissary, Spears, in the dark days of 1940, ‘Our peasants are part of the soil of France. Have you peasants in England? I doubt it – sailors, yes, but it is not the same thing’.54 In this way he laid claim to the laurels of a leader who could unite and liberate France.
Second Act
In 1932, the 84-year-old Hindenburg was summoned as Germany’s saviour yet again. The two rounds of the republic’s second presidential elections were fought with ‘inverted fronts’.55 While the so-called Weimar Parties (the Social Democrats,
448 European History Quarterly, 9.
the Centre Party, and the successors of the German Democrats, the Deutsche Staatspartei) – Hindenburg’s opponents of 1925 – joined ranks to bring about his re-election, many of his former champions campaigned for one of his right-wing rivals, Theodor Duesterberg or Adolf Hitler in the hope of hastening the republic’s demise.56 That so many of Hindenburg’s former supporters defected can all too easily lead one to the conclusion that his myth had completely lost its appeal by 1932.57 Had republicans supported the serving President solely as the ‘lesser of two evils’58 – the anti-Hitler – and had the nationalist right thoroughly turned against him, however, one would expect a complete absence of mythical rhetoric from the campaign. Strikingly, however, the Hindenburg myth was not only at the heart of the pro- Hindenburg campaign, but also a central feature of the debates raging within the nationalist camp.59 Hindenburg’s nationalist opponents understood their political fight against him as ‘the most loyal opposition’60 while the Nazis carefully directed their propaganda against the ‘system’ Hindenburg represented rather than against his ‘personality’.61
With five million unemployed and civil war like scenes in Germany’s streets Hindenburg’s saviour credentials were still an invaluable political currency. It was no coincidence that, with an echo of 1925, the democratic press hailed his decisive election victories as the ‘salvation’ in times of crisis and catastrophe.62 Even the Social Democratic Prussian Minister President Otto Braun praised the President as the embodiment of ‘continuity’, ‘masculine loyalty’ and ‘dutiful service’.63 According to one of Germany’s leading liberal publicists, the millions of votes cast for Hindenburg showed the people’s gratitude for the ‘deed of the leader who . . . has once again sacrificed his glory to salvage the country from civil war and self-destruction’.64 Some of the letters the presidential bureau received in response to a speech Hindenburg gave on national German radio on 10 March 1932 illustrate the extent to which such themes resonated with ordinary Germans. One woman from Berlin had sat beneath a framed portrait of Hindenburg while listening to his words, convinced that ‘Hindenburg remains Germany’s saviour’. Articulating the religious aspect of her devotion she went on: ‘2,000 years ago the saviour was also crucified but still succeeded’.65
Even while the republican camp counted on Hindenburg as a bulwark against Nazism and ordinary Germans clung to their somewhat elusive belief in Hindenburg as a self-sacrificial Christ-like redeemer, Edgar Julius Jung, one of the leading right- wing intellectuals of the ‘Conservative Revolution’ still promoted the serving president as the saviour from the ‘chaos of Weimar’.66 In the words of Carl von Ossietzky, Hindenburg had thus become ‘a heroic frame onto which anyone can clamp whatever colourful web of illusions he desires’.67 Even if the observant journal- ist underestimated the President’s own role in filling this ‘heroic frame’ he was certainly right to point out the striking breadth of his appeal. No other figure in this period of deep political fragmentation and polarization could have united a front ranging from conservative monarchists to political Catholics, Social Democrats and
von der Goltz & Gildea: Flawed Saviours 449
the trade unionists represented in the Iron Front. One person’s saviour from Weimar may have been another’s saviour of Weimar – but a saviour nonetheless.
On 30 January, less than a year after his re-election as a bulwark against the Nazis, Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany. Their trust in Hindenburg as the guarantor of republican stability had made republicans reluctant to hold the President accountable for the quiet constitutional takeover underway since 1930. The unwillingness – and inability – to probe the Hindenburg myth thoroughly in the face of growing and repeated political disappointment was a central aspect of the republic’s demise. Relying on the venerated Hindenburg as a source of political legitimacy helped the Nazis ease the transition from democracy to dictator- ship. Public displays of unity between Hindenburg and Hitler, such as the infamous ‘Day of Potsdam’ of 21 March 1933, convinced many more politically moderate and bourgeois Germans of the merits of Hitler’s rule.68
Perhaps the most graphic illustration of the longevity and endurance of Hindenburg’s mythical appeal, however, was that he continued to be a rallying point for opponents of the regime in spite of his complicity in the Nazi takeover. He remained a last resort – a protective shield or dam – a source of hope for resistance at the eleventh hour against the increasingly oppressive Nazi dictatorship.69
Many considered him a fellow victim of the regime, or at least a senile old man who was being exploited. The Jewish civil servant Victor Klemperer reacted to Hitler’s appointment by convincing himself that Hindenburg could not have been in his right mind on 30 January 1933; guided by ill-intentioned advisers he had brought Hitler to power and was now no more than a ‘puppet’.70 Convinced that Hindenburg was on their side, the jokes of Nazi opponents, acting as a release valve for their anxiety, often portrayed the aged President as a fellow victim of Nazism: ‘What is Germany’s smallest concentration camp? Neudeck – it has just one prisoner: Hindenburg’, was one.71 After all, how could the ‘saviour’ of 1914, 1925 and 1932 have sanctioned the increasingly murderous Nazi policies?
Hindenburg’s death on 2 August 1934, after which Hitler merged the offices of Chancellor and President, completing the ‘seizure of power’, left many opponents of the regime depressed and fearful of what was to come. Although he had considered Hindenburg powerless for some time, Klemperer was now ‘very downhearted’. ‘For a long time no more than a name and yet a last counterweight, which now falls away’, he noted in his diary.72 That Hindenburg was still formally the head of state until 1934 was important psychologically – although he visibly colluded with the regime, he still seemed like a last obstacle on Hitler’s path to total power. The intangible belief that Hindenburg would ‘sort things out’ and somehow ‘save’ Germany had meant different things to different groups of society during the previous 20 years. Even though he had repeatedly disappointed the hopes invested in him, this mechanism was left largely intact until after 1933. Ultimately, the trust of those who had hoped, as late as 1932, that he would save the country from Nazi rule, was bitterly dis- appointed.
40 European History Quarterly, 9.
Philippe Pétain was finally called back to save France when the Third Republic collapsed in the face of the German onslaught in May–June 1940. He was the provi- dential man to take charge. There was no military coup. When defeat seemed inevitable Pétain argued for an armistice and was invited by the president of the Republic to form a government on 16 June. On 10 July French deputies and senators meeting at Vichy gave him full powers to draft a new constitution by a majority of 569 to 80 with 17 abstentions. This vote demonstrated the appeal of Pétain to all shades of the political spectrum, for the Chamber of Deputies was still that elected in 1936, in which 57 per cent of Socialists and 58 per cent of Radicals voted him full powers, as did 82 per cent of the Radicals who dominated the Senate.73 By a series of constitu- tional acts on 11 July he made himself head of the French state, with full executive and legislative powers and dismissed parliament until further order.
What was forgotten at the Liberation, and subsequently, was how broadly and deeply Pétain’s moves were approved. The armistice Pétain sued for was approved because France was beaten and it was now a question of saving lives. If there was to be no ‘miracle of the Marne’, as in 1914, there should not be another Verdun. Besides, this time the war did not only concern soldiers. Civilians had fled their homes before the advancing Germans and wanted to return home.74 While other French leaders deserted their posts, Pétain remained the father of his people – just like Hindenburg when he remained at his post in 1918. Pétain was attentive to the wants and fears of the French, as he had been with his soldiers during the Great War. ‘I will not abandon French soil and will endure the suffering that will be imposed on the fatherland and its sons,’ he told the council of ministers on 13 June. ‘The renaissance of France will be the fruit of this suffering’.75 The armistice and the formation of a government at Vichy with formal sovereignty over the whole of France opened the way to the country’s moral and physical regeneration. ‘Our defeat was the result of our slacken- ing’, he announced on 25 June.
The pleasure principle destroyed what was built by the spirit of sacrifice. I am inviting you first of all to undertake an intellectual and moral reform. French people, I promise that from your fervour and effort, you will see a new France spring up.76
Pétain’s appeal to the French people, with whom he was in mystical union, went beyond the discredited politicians of ‘legal France’. ‘Marshal Pétain’s words, on the evening of 25 June’, the novelist François Mauriac wrote in the Figaro, ‘sounded almost beyond time. It was not a man’s voice that we heard but the appeal of our great nation humiliated rising from the depths of our history’.77
This mystical union was articulated not through election meetings, for there were no elections in Vichy France, but through the Marshal’s tours which resembled a royal progress, through rituals and ceremonies, organizations and associations. ‘Pétain is France and France is Pétain’, announced the Archbishop of Lyon when the Marshal visited the city in November 1940, and there was a religiosity about the
von der Goltz & Gildea: Flawed Saviours 4
popular adulation.78 Henri Frenay, army officer and escaped prisoner of war who later joined De Gaulle, described Pétain’s review of 15,000 men of the Légion Française des Combattants, in which all veterans’ associations were now combined, at Marseille in December 1940:
The head of state alighted from his car, grave and dignified. He is in uniform. Without a smile he surveys the electrified crowd which he salutes with a flourish of his stick. With his hair white as snow and pale blue eyes, his calm has a powerful effect . . . A large woman with a wide, pleated dress, probably a fishwife, kneels and piously kisses the hem of his coat. I have never witnessed such religious fervour.79
The one million prisoners of war in Germany were another source of loyalty to Pétain. In the Oflag where he was a POW Jean Guitton set up a National Revolution study group and recalled hearing Pétain’s voice on the radio on Christmas Eve 1941. ‘It was steady and strong. It gave us courage. I looked at my neighbours. Their heads were bowed, their backs hunched. There was a great silence in the hut, a rare silence which is language itself.’80
Wives of POWS were particularly cultivated by Vichy, as the embodiment of their husbands’ patriotism on French soil, and in turn they wrote over a quarter of the letters sent to Pétain, trusting as they did that he would bring their husbands home. The loyalty of women in general was solicited though the Fête des Mères, a Catholic day that was celebrated in town halls also every May, and women looked to Pétain as a protector, counsellor and even magical figure.81 Women were encouraged to have large families rather than to work, and Pétain himself stood in as the godfather for every fifteenth child. The loyalty of children was developed in school by essays and drawings that were sent to their imaginary grandfather at Vichy. The key moments of Pétain’s career were illustrated in a much reproduced series of woodcuts, like a saint’s life, by Gérard Ambroselli, while school halls rang to the strains of Maréchal, nous voilà!82 At a later age children were recruited into organizations devoted to developing a spirit of community and loyalty to Pétain (see Figure 2). Young men of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse which replaced military service gathered round an old oak in the forest of Tronçais in November 1940 to be told by the education minister that Pétain, like the oak, was ‘the man who three times has saved France’.83
The France that Pétain invoked was not the centralized, revolutionary-Napoleonic France, but the France of small towns and villages, of the older provinces whose identity had been redefined by nineteenth-century folklorists. In October 1940 he visited the Auvergne village of Ambert, home of the rustic novelist Henri Pourrat, who described the Marshal conversing with a peasant in clogs. The peasant embodied ‘earthly wisdom, crowned by Christian wisdom. He understands that the Marshal shares the same wisdom, which will guide France’s renewal’.84 Likewise he went on a pilgrimage to the former home of Provençal regionalist, Frédéric Mistral, at Maillane, endorsing the poet’s message that ‘love of the petite patrie does not take
4 European History Quarterly, 9.
Figure 2
anything away from love of the grande patrie, but on the contrary increases it’.85 The national heroes to whom Pétain paid tribute, commemorated because they had resurrected a defeated and divided France, thrown it against occupying forces, and sacrificed themselves in the attempt, were drawn from a past which long antedated the Revolution. The cult of Joan of Arc reached a high point on 10 May 1942, with young people particularly associated with celebrations all over the country. At Lyon 20,000 young people of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse, Compagnons de France, scouts, guides and Catholic youth heard the Minister for Youth hold up Joan of Arc as one who had saved her country as Marshal Pétain was now doing.86 Three months later, on 30 August 1942, delegates of the Légion Française des Combattants gathered on the plateau of Gergovia, near Clermont-Ferrand, to mark their second anniversary on the site where the Gallic chieftain Vercingétorix had fought the occupying Romans in 52BC and was said to have founded the French nation. They brought sachets of soil from all over France and its empire to symbolize the unity of a nation, and paid homage to Pétain who, like Vercingétorix, was sacrificing his person to the independence and unity of his country.87
von der Goltz & Gildea: Flawed Saviours 4
Black Legends and Abandoned Tombs
One of the most conspicuous similarities between the mythical trajectories of Hindenburg and Pétain is that, ultimately, they were both brought into disrepute by cooperation with Adolf Hitler. The revised post-war iconography in Germany and France was near identical: two photographs of a handshake became the most enduring visual codes in each country.
A photograph of Hindenburg shaking the hand of the bowing Hitler on the ‘Day of Potsdam’ was among the most widely distributed historical images in German school textbooks and encyclopaedias after 194588 (see Figure 3). The Nazis them- selves hailed a handshake performed between Hindenburg and Hitler inside Postdam’s Garrison Church as symbolizing the ‘marriage’ between the Prussian past and the National Socialist future.89 In visual terms, however, they favoured images that highlighted popular participation on the day. In contrast, the image of Hitler bowing to the aged Hindenburg outside the church became immortal in post- war West German iconography. Because the photograph blots out the audience and focuses almost entirely on the two men, it conveys a message of personalized responsibility for the Nazi takeover. Since post-war observers were also aware that Hitler’s actions after March 1933 made a mockery of his posture as the ‘humble servant’, the image highlights the Nazis’ hypocrisy and powers of seduction. It suggests that Hindenburg – symbolizing the gullibility of the (doubly) old elite – was conned by the Nazi leadership.90
This symbolism was transferable between Germany and wartime France. The handshake between Pétain and the Nazi leader at Montoire-sur-le-Loir on 24 October 1940 is undoubtedly one of the most enduring images of Vichy France (see Figure 4). Taken by Hitler’s official photographer Heinrich Hoffmann and first published in the German press, the Völkischer Beobachter hailed the gesture as ‘serious and dignified’.91 In France, on the other hand, the handshake was at the origin of the ‘black legend’ of Pétain which saw him not as the saviour of his country but as a traitor. By ‘collaboration’ he understood negotiation with the Germans to alleviate the condi- tions of the occupation, but the gesture was immediately seen as a pact with the devil. A French soldier in exile in New York wrote that Pétain was now known as ‘Pétainburg’ – after Hindenburg.92
Despite this pact with the devil, the cult of Marshal Pétain retained much of its vibrancy throughout the Vichy period. First, Pétain was said to be playing a ‘double game’, negotiating with Hitler but also in contact with Churchill. Second, much popular discontent was aimed less at Pétain than at the Vichy administration and at ministers such as Pierre Laval who after November 1942 became head of govern- ment, leaving Pétain as head of state. Just as Hindenburg was rarely attacked directly, the Angers police reported in March 1942 that ‘The person of Marshal Pétain remains in general above criticism’.
44 European History Quarterly, 9.
Figure 3
It seems indeed that his prestige is greater than ever. The population admires his courage and the strength of his character, and seems to accord him even more confidence since it has learned that he is as far as possible defending the independence of the country.93
Third, a powerful rumour held that Pétain and de Gaulle were working together against the German occupation, one from within France, the other without. Michel Debré, appointed Commissaire de la République at Angers during the Liberation, reported that the local nobles ‘have their sons with de Gaulle and the portrait of Pétain in their sitting-rooms’.94 Pétain’s enduring popularity was manifested by his journey to Paris on 26 April 1944, six weeks before the Normandy landings. He visited casualties from British bombing in Paris, was welcomed to Notre-Dame by the archbishop of Paris, and was greeted by a crowd of 10,000 in front of the Hôtel de Ville, dumb with emotion, many in tears, before the children sang, Maréchal, nous voilà!95
All this changed at the Liberation which marked the revenge of legal France over real France. The Republic was restored and with it a republican legality that declared the Vichy regime null and void. De Gaulle asserted himself as the sole voice of France from his appeal of 10 June 1940 to his walk down the Champs Elysées on 25 August 1944. Pétain was brought to trial in July 1945, accused of the treacherous delivery of France into the hands of the enemy and of usurping power from the Republic.96 He
von der Goltz & Gildea: Flawed Saviours 4
Figure 4
had destroyed the Republic like a Bonaparte and betrayed the nation in a way they never had. ‘The man who was Marshal Pétain’ was condemned to death, then sent to live out the rest of his days on the Ile d’Yeu, in the Atlantic off the Vendée coast. There he died, aged 95, on 23 July 1951.
The peripheral post-war burial places of Hindenburg and Pétain powerfully reflect the marginalization of both men in German and French public consciousness. Neither was (or remained) buried at the site of his mythical initiation – the Ossuary of Douaumont and Tannenberg Memorial – whose shells Pétain and Hindenburg had opened in a moment of transnational mythical competition in 1927. Hindenburg’s remains, which the Nazis had originally buried inside the Tannenberg Memorial, would end up in Marburg’s Elizabeth Church after an odyssey via Potsdam and a Thuringian saltmine. Dug out in a clandestine, night-time operation in August 1946, Hindenburg’s post-war grave could not mark a starker contrast to the Nazi choreographed pomposity of his funeral in 1934. Situated immediately to the left of the main church entrance, the site is barely lit. Although the names of Hindenburg and his wife are carved into the gravestones they are almost impossible to read from the visitors’ perspective due to the graves’ slight elevation and because the area is sealed off with a cord. Visitors have to study the church’s information brochure rather carefully to know who actually rests in front of them.97
The post-war re-interpretation of Hindenburg did not just find expression in visual or spatial terms. Early post-war historiography and public discourse increas-
46 European History Quarterly, 9.
ingly defined Hindenburg as the ‘undertaker of German democracy’, as Hitler’s ‘precursor’ or ‘Steigbügelhalter’ (‘stirrup holder’) – a somewhat tragic figure who had helped the Nazis into power albeit with varying degrees of personal responsibil- ity or guilt attributed to him.98 Analysing Hindenburg’s mythical standing in 1946, the left-wing journalist Erich Wollenberg concluded admonishingly: ‘Only once this slow poison has been secreted from the German national body will a democratic Germany be able to flourish’.99 This re-interpretation and vilification of Hindenburg
– with unmistakable parallels to the ‘black legend’ of Pétain – was not free of apologetic tendencies. The rhetoric of ‘secreting poison’ and the need for moral ‘purification’ branded the myth as a substance alien to the German national body. Focusing on the President’s personal shortcomings (an alleged lack of political understanding, senility, a limited intellect) offered an opportunity to skirt the issue of popular consent so vital to Nazi rule. The notion of a senile Hindenburg and his small camarilla of self-interested advisers delivering the German people to Hitler sat neatly with the post-war paradigm of the Nazi dictatorship as a ‘historical accident’.100
At the same time, however, the renunciation of Hindenburg was not total in the pluralist Federal Republic. Whilst ambivalent memories no doubt also existed in the GDR, the East German state limited the room in which these could be expressed; Hindenburg appeared as the chief representative of the ills of the corrupt ‘bourgeois- imperialist’ system. His name was erased from all street signs and his memorials dismantled.101 In West Germany, by contrast, countless streets carry his name to this day. There was also no shortage of volunteers like Hindenburg’s former press aide Gerhard Schultze-Pfaelzer, who, by his own account, tried ‘to do everything . . . to prevent Hindenburg’s image as a gentlemanly, kind, and wise man from going under in the foul waters of the Nazi tide’.102 When the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published a series of articles critical of Hindenburg in the mid-1950s, the paper received an unusually large number of readers’ letters, conveying their authors’ ‘painful agitation that one was trying to touch what was sacred to them’.103
More importantly, there was a strong undercurrent of Hindenburg worship among select, yet influential, groups. Hindenburg became a lieu de mémoire for German expellees, a considerable and highly organized force in post-war West German society.104 Many of the visitors who brought flowers to Hindenburg’s grave in Marburg were expellees who felt a common bond of destiny with the ‘the saviour of the Heimat’; his mortal remains had also been ‘expelled’ from the East and his family had lost its property. Such sentiments were not just shared by those who had lived through Hindenburg’s presidency. A popular Hindenburg biography published by a right-wing publishing house in 1961 explicitly aimed at raising a new generation of devotees and sought to keep Hindenburg’s memory alive with reference to Germany’s lost territories in the East:
Will this coffin be lifted onto young shoulders once more and will it, after all, find its final resting place under the trees of Neudeck, as the ‘old gentleman’
von der Goltz & Gildea: Flawed Saviours 4
wished? A book about Hindenburg cannot close other than with invoking his East Prussian Heimat and the unity of the German Reich.106
Despite such endeavours resonating with some audiences, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, Hindenburg did not continue to catch the imagination of the Germans to the same extent Pétain did in France. A small body of loyal supporters, led by his defence lawyer Jacques Isorni and including former military and civil officials of Vichy orchestrated a revival of the Pétain cult. He was portrayed as a Christ-like martyr to monstrous injustice and ingratitude. Comparisons were made to the trial of Louis XVI, to the exile of Napoleon on Saint Helena, and indeed to the passion of Christ. Isorni spoke of ‘France’s sin’, Pétain’s ‘agony’, his ‘Calvary’, and ‘the odious martyrdom of an old man of almost a hundred’.107 It was the painful fulfil- ment, he said, of the Marshal’s ‘gift of himself’ to France.
The group that had campaigned for Pétain’s liberation renamed itself after his death as the Association to Defend the Memory of Marshal Pétain. It had two goals: first, to reopen his trial in order to have him rehabilitated; and second, to have his body taken from the Ile d’Yeu to be reburied among his old soldiers at Douaumont. While the body of Napoleon had been brought back to lie in state in the Invalides, that of Pétain would be reinterred at Douaumont, among the soldier-peasants who loved him and had fallen on the battlefield of Verdun. In this way the myth of Pétain- Verdun would come to overwrite the myth of Pétain-Vichy. In the meantime the Ile d’Yeu became a place of pilgrimage for those who continued to honour his memory, and new generations joined those of the Verdun veterans and Vichy youth. In 1973 a group of supporters eventually resorted to direct action, removing Pétain’s coffin from the Ile d’Yeu, but only got it as far as a garage in the Paris suburb of Clichy.108
Those who promoted the cult of Pétain took the view that ‘the Resistance’ had established itself as a clique that used its credentials to establish a monopoly of legit- imacy and power. They argued that Pétain too had resisted the Germans, battling against the Germans’ demands on a daily basis with a dagger to his throat, remain- ing among the French people while de Gaulle worked for their liberation from abroad. Resistance hero Colonel Rémy broke ranks in 1950 and argued that in June 1940 France needed ‘two strings to her bow’, ‘the Pétain “string” just as much as the de Gaulle “string”’.109 These ideas died hard and a reassessment of Pétain’s legacy for L’fívénement du jeudi in 1985, for the fortieth anniversary of his trial, provoked a surge of readers’ letters subscribing to the idea that Pétain had been the second string, held a shield while de Gaulle brandished a sword and played a double game between Germany and Great Britain.110 Many who joined the Resistance had begun by being loyal to Vichy, among them François Mitterrand, who escaped from a POW camp to organize returning POWs, first for Vichy, then for the Resistance. From 1984, as President of the Republic, he sent a wreath annually, on Armistice Day, to Pétain’s tomb on the Ile d’Yeu 1984, and before he died candidly revealed his veneration for Pétain.111
48 European History Quarterly, 9.
After 1987, however, the question of Vichy and the Jews erupted onto the political scene and dealt a blow to the cult of Pétain from which it did not recover. Proceedings against Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie, Vichy police chief René Bousquet and Lyon militia leader Paul Touvier, blackened Vichy and Pétain with the accusation of participation in the Holocaust.112 Jewish organizations commemorating the 1942 deportation of Jews from Paris by Vichy on 16 July 1992 demanded that Mitterrand recognize the responsibility of the French state in the persecution of Jews and stop sending wreaths to Pétain’s tomb. He refused to do the first, arguing that the Republic was not answerable for what Vichy had done, but agreed to stop honouring Pétain from 1993.113
After President Chirac in 1995 acknowledged the role of the French state in the Holocaust, ‘Pétain’s crime’ was no longer the armistice or the abolition of the Republic but the destruction of Jews in France. His cult was virtually finished off. Yet there remained a residual myth, diffuse and unstructured but deep and loyal which rejected the ‘presentism’ of the post-1992 view of Vichy, as it had that of 1945, and nurtured the cult of a saviour who had redeemed France from defeat and chaos in 1916, 1917, 1934 and 1940. Two interviews undertaken in the Angers region in 1997 illustrate this cult. Paule de Beaumont, daughter of a Vichy regional prefect, said that her father ‘entirely espoused the theory of Pétain that you had to stay in France to protect the French population’ and attacked those who accused the Marshal of crimes against humanity. More pointedly, a winegrower from Saumur who had fought in the French army in 1940 simply declared, ‘Pétain saved my life’.114
Conclusion
If mythical figures give us vital clues to the ‘collective unconscious’ of the society in which they are worshipped, French and Germans shared many hidden fears and desires in the era of the two World Wars.115 Not only was the Weimar Republic, a newly-founded state in search of political legitimacy and burdened by military defeat and social and political strife, a perfect ‘incubator for political myths’, but in the Third Republic the Pétain cult also found ample nourishment.116 Crisis ridden interwar Germany is often cited as having been especially susceptible to the appeal of political saviours and notions of strong leadership.117 That the Pétain myth was similarly intense and enduring in France, however, shows that the French were also prone to investing their trust in a ‘strong man’ and ‘saviour’. In this sense at least, Germany’s interwar path seems not to have been so special after all. By the same token, Pétain’s Vichy ceases to be an aberration from the seamless narrative of the Republic and nation and can be reinserted into an alternative story of the search in times of national crisis for an ‘eternal France’.118
The myths surrounding Hindenburg and Pétain not only shared numerous themes and trajectories that were not lost on contemporary observers, but also had transnational links. Both men shot to fame from positions of relative obscurity after
von der Goltz & Gildea: Flawed Saviours 49
‘saving’ their countries in crucial defensive battles. They constructed and drew upon the establishment of those battles as lieux de mémoire at Tannenberg and Douaumont. Each was then summoned from retirement in time of renewed crisis to save their countries as political leaders, Hindenburg as President of the Weimar Republic, Pétain as minister, then head of the French state.
Their myths came as much from below as they came from above and they both rose above the competition and became potent and plastic symbols of German and French virtues respectively. A specific type of masculinity was embodied in Hindenburg’s solidity and square jaw, Pétain’s erect posture and clear blue eyes. Humanity was more a feature of Pétain’s cult than Hindenburg’s, but both narra- tives had at their heart notions of martyr-like self-sacrificial devotion and dutiful service for which their acolytes were expected to show gratitude. Their great age was recast as an advantage not as a handicap: they were likened to matter which resisted the ravages of time – the solid rock in the ocean, the ancient oak in the forest. Their myths were linked to legends from the depths of national history whose heroism was now incarnate in them: Hermann and Vercingétorix, Friedrich Barbarossa and Joan of Arc, Bismarck – but not Napoleon.
Although Hindenburg and Pétain were both political beings, each presented himself publicly as hovering in an elevated, non-partisan sphere. While both men were to the right of centre in their personal political beliefs, they could count on fervent republican admirers. The followings of both were strikingly heterogeneous; the veneration of neither was strictly consigned to a single political camp, class, gender, religious group or region. It was often represented as being support, even fervour, from beyond the political class, in the depths of the country, among veterans and prisoners of war, children, young people and women.
Ultimately both men cooperated with Hitler and assisted in the destruction of the republics that had brought them back to power. In the German case this helped the Nazis consolidate their rule by winning over more moderate right-wing Germans. In the French case, it made the population accept the German occupation. The hand- shakes at Potsdam and Montoire led to the elaboration of ‘black legends’ about these leaders. And yet in both cases there persisted an alternative, deeper myth which constructed Hindenburg and Pétain as saviours from the chaos of defeat and revolu- tion and indeed bulwarks against Nazism. The myth of the victors of Tannenberg and Verdun was never entirely overridden by later political mistakes. In this case their age was brought back as an excuse. Hindenburg was portrayed as ‘tragic for having lived two years too long’119 and both he and Pétain as increasingly senile.
The durability of their adulation is perhaps the most striking similarity between the two phenomena. The myths of both men survived long after they had fulfilled the expectations of their followers, for both men did at least as much to disappoint as to meet the expectations their devotees had invested in them. As it turned out, the subscription to both myths was less ephemeral and more enduring than a narrow application of Max Weber’s model of ‘charismatic authority’120 would suggest.
460 European History Quarterly, 9.
Whereas Weber insists on the leader having to prove his worth time and again to sustain his following, what is most striking about the two cases discussed here is that both the Pétain and Hindenburg myth survived a series of contradictions and dis- appointments. It may be that their myths owed as much to Weber’s model of ‘tradi- tional authority’, according to which legitimacy is accorded to a father figure by virtue of his age and sex; such a leader does not have to prove himself every day but occupies a place both sanctified and bound by custom. The myths of Hindenburg and Pétain were less vacant projection screens, ‘heroic frames’ or ‘blank images’ ready to be stamped with their followers conceptions of a saviour,121 than changing models from which successive generations of acolytes made what they could.
Notes
L’Ossuaire de Douaumont. Guide du Touriste et du Pèlerin (Verdun n.d.).
Dennis Showalter, Tannenberg: Clash of Empires (Hamden CT 1991), 323.
F.B. Schenk, ‘Tannenberg/Grunwald’, in Etienne François and Hagen Schulze (eds), Deutsche Erinnerungsorte, Vol. 2 (Munich 2001), 446–57.
Jürgen Tietz, Das Tannenberg-Nationaldenkmal: Architektur, Geschichte, Kontext (Berlin 1999), 53.
Schulthess’ Europäischer Geschichtskalender, Vol. 68 (Munich 1927), 153.
Neue Preußische Kreuz-Zeitung, 19 September 1927; Berliner Börsen-Courier, 19 September 1927.
Didier Fischer, Le mythe Pétain (Paris 2002); Pierre Servent, Le mythe Pétain: Verdun ou les tranchées de la memoire (Paris 1992); Anna von der Goltz, Hindenburg: Power, Myth, and the Rise of the Nazis (Oxford forthcoming 2009); Jesko von Hoegen, Der Held von Tannenberg: Genesis und Funktion des Hindenburg-Mythos (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna 2007); Wolfram Pyta, Hindenburg: Herrschaft zwischen Hohenzollern und Hitler (Munich 2007).
Nicholas Atkin, Pétain (London 1998); Charles Williams, Pétain (London 2005).
Both v. Hoegen and Pyta state that the Hindenburg myth was an exclusively German phenomenon without parallels elsewhere, specifically citing the French case, see Hoegen, op. cit., 61, 62, 427; Pyta, op. cit., 69, 228.
David Blackbourn and Geoffrey Eley, The Peculiarities of German History (Oxford 1984).
Philippe Burrin’s chapter on Vichy is the only one on the subject in Pierre Nora’s eight-volume Les Lieux de Mémoire (Paris 1992), III.1, 321–41, and described as ‘a black memory’.
Neue Preußische Kreuz-Zeitung, no. 408, 1 September 1914.
Berliner Tageblatt, no. 438, 29 August 1914.
Aribert Reimann, Der große Krieg der Sprachen: Untersuchungen zur historischen Semantik in Deutschland und England zur Zeit des Ersten Weltkriegs (Essen 2000), 40–1.
W. v. Scholz, ‘Mythos Hindenburg’, Der Heimatdienst, October 1927.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, August 1914 (London 1974), 387.
Andreas Dörner, Politischer Mythos und symbolische Politik: Der Hermannmythos: Zur Entstehung des Nationalbewußtseins der Deutschen (Reinbek 1996), 96.
Sabine Behrenbeck, Der Kult um die toten Helden: Nationalsozialistische Mythen, Riten und Symbole (Vierow 1996), 65–71.
U. Frevert, ‘Pflicht’, in François and Schulze, op. cit., 269–85.
R. Krohn, ‘Friedrich I. Barbarossa: Barbarossa und der Alte vom Berge: Zur neuzeitlichen Rezeption der Kyffhäuser-Sage’, in Ulrich Müller and Werner Wunderlich (eds), Mittelalter- Mythen, Vol. 1 (St Gallen 1996), 101–18; Die Woche, no. 40, 1 October 1927.
Dörner, op. cit., 317–18; Paul Warncke et al. (eds), Hindenburg-Album des Kladderadatsch
(Berlin 1925), 6.
von der Goltz & Gildea: Flawed Saviours 46
Robert Gerwarth, The Bismarck Myth: Weimar Germany and the Legacy of the Iron Chancellor
(Oxford 2005), 86–92.
Anne Schmidt, Belehrung, Propaganda, Vertrauensarbeit: Zum Wandel amtlicher Kommunikationspolitik in Deutschland 1914–1918 (Essen 2006).
The German original is ‘Hindenburg wird die Sache schon machen’, Berlin Chief of Police Traugott von Jagow, 16 November 1914; in Ingo Materna and Hans-Joachim Schreckenbach (eds), Berichte des Berliner Polizeipräsidenten zur Stimmung und Lage der Bevölkerung in Berlin 1914–1918 (Weimar 1987), 24.
Vossische Zeitung, 8 April 1918, copy in Bundesarchiv Koblenz, NLBauer, no. 15, 25–33.
Paul Koschate, Hindenburg, hurra! Schul- und Volksfeier zum 70. Geburtstage unseres Feldmarschalls am 2. Oktober 1917 (Breslau 1917).
Williams, op. cit., 125–-9.
28. Servent, op. cit., 39, 74–80.
Maréchal Pétain, La Crise morale et militaire de 1917: Note préliminaire par Alfred Conquet
(Paris 1966), 12.
Servent, op. cit., 102.
31. Fischer, op. cit., 115–16, 172.
Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, N46, no. 156, 10; Georg Bernhard in Vossische Zeitung, no. 550, 27 October 1918.
Hindenburg to August von Cramon, 27 March 1925, in Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, N266, no. 24, 14.
R. Bessel, ‘Mobilisation and Demobilisation in Germany, 1916–1919’, in John Horne (ed.), State, Society and Mobilisation in Europe during the First World War (Cambridge 1997), 212–22, 220.
Ralf Krumpholz, Wahrnehmung und Politik: Die Bedeutung des Ordnungsdenkens für das politische Handeln am Beispiel der deutschen Revolution von 1918–1920 (Münster 1998); Walter Mühlhausen, Friedrich Ebert 1871–1925: Reichspräsident der Weimarer Republik (Bonn 2006), 150–64.
Retired officer Hermann Hoth to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 16 January 1955, cited in Walther Hubatsch, Hindenburg und der Staat: Aus den Papieren des Generalfeldmarschalls und Reichspräsidenten von 1878 bis 1934 (Göttingen, Berlin, Frankfurt/M. and Zurich 1966), 48.
Der Heimatdienst: Mitteilungen der Reichszentrale für Heimatdienst, Vol. 7, no. 19, 1 October 1927.
von der Goltz, op. cit., Chap. 3.
On the debates surrounding Hindenburg’s nomination: N.D. Cary, ‘The Making of the Reich President, 1925: German Conservatism and the Nomination of Paul von Hindenburg’, Central European History, Vol. 23 (1990), 179–204; generally also the other articles in this volume.
Deutsche Tageszeitung, 18 April 1925, evening edition; Korrespondenz der DNVP, 17 April 1925; further, Kurt Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik: Die politischen Ideen des deutschen Nationalismus zwischen 1918 und 1933 (Munich 1968), 214–22.
Letter to Freia Jarres, n.d. (May 1925), in Bundesarchiv Koblenz, NL Karl Jarres, no. 23, n.p.
Reichsblock’s Appeal to the German people, 8 April 1925 in Johannes Hohlfeld (ed.), Deutsche Reichsgeschichte in Dokumenten 1849–1934, Vol. 2 (Berlin 1934), 835–6.
Deutsche Tageszeitung, 22 April 1925, evening edition; 21 April 1925, morning edition.
Vorwärts, no. 168, 9 April 1925.
Eberhard Kolb, The Weimar Republic (London 2005), 53–99.
Ferdinand Friedensburg, Die Weimarer Republik (Berlin 1946), 195–6.
Die Weltbühne, no. 17, 27 April 1926.
Frankfurter Zeitung, 14 March 1930, second morning edition.
Jean-Raymond Tournoux, Pétain and de Gaulle (London 1966), 213.
46 European History Quarterly, 9.
Fischer, op. cit., 197–204.
Gustave Hervé, C’est Pétain qu’il nous faut! (Paris 1935), 5–9, 60.
Jérôme Carcopino, Souvenirs de sept ans, 1937–1944 (Paris 1953), 155.
Philippe Pétain, Actes et fícrits (Paris 1974), 17–18.
Edward Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, Vol. 2 : The Fall of France, June 1940 (London 1954), 88.
‘Verkehrte Fronten’, Deutsche Zeitung, 17 June 1931.
L.E. Jones, ‘Hindenburg and the Conservative Dilemma in the 1932 Presidential Elections’,
German Studies Review, Vol. 20 (1997), 235–59.
Andreas Dorpalen, Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic (Princeton, NJ 1964), 265.
H.A. Winkler, ‘Choosing the Lesser Evil: The German Social Democrats and the Fall of the Weimar Republic’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 25 (1990), 205–27.
See Chapter 7 of von der Goltz, op. cit..
Karl von Einem to Hindenburg, 3 March 1932, in Bundesarchiv Berlin, R601, no. 375, 108–17.
Goebbels, confidential memorandum, 4 February 1932, NSDAP Hauptarchiv, Reel 30, fol. 565.
Demokratischer Zeitungsdienst, 12 April 1932.
Vorwärts, no. 111, 10 March 1932; Donna Harsh, German Social Democracy and the Rise of Nazism (Chapel Hill 1993), 179.
Julius Elbau in Vossische Zeitung, no. 125, 14 March 1932.
Bundesarchiv Berlin, R601, no. 376, 52; further, A. Menge, ‘The Iron Hindenburg – a popular icon of Weimar Germany’, German History, Vol. 26, no. 3 (2008), 357–82.
Helmut Jahnke, Edgar Julius Jung: Ein konservativer Revolutionär zwischen Tradition und Moderne (Pfaffenweiler 1998), 165.
Die Weltbühne, no. 12, 22 March 1932.
Ian Kershaw, The ‘Hitler Myth’. Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford and New York 1987), 54; W. Freitag, ‘Nationale Mythen und kirchliches Heil: Der “Tag von Potsdam”’, Westfälische Forschungen 41 (1991), 379–430.
Berliner Tageblatt, 4 March 1933, morning edition; Vorwärts, no. 95, 25 February 1933; Karl- Dietrich Bracher et al., Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung: Studien zur Errichtung des totalitären Herrschaftssystems in Deutschland 1933/34 (Cologne and Opladen 1962), 967; John Wheeler-Bennet, Wooden Titan: Hindenburg in Twenty Years of German History, 1914–1934, second edition (London 1967), 437.
Diary entry for 20 March 1933, Victor Klemperer, I shall bear Witness: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1933–1941 (London 1999), 9.
Hans-Joachim Gamm, Der Flüsterwitz im Dritten Reich (Munich 1963), 18. Neudeck was Hindenburg’s family estate in East Prussia.
Diary entry for 2 August 1934, Klemperer, op. cit., 97; also Klaus Behnken (ed.), Deutschland- Berichte der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (Sopade) 1934–1940, Vol. 1, fourth edition (Munich 1980), 299–300.
Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944 (Oxford 2001), 133; Paul Smith, A History of the French Senate, Vol. 1: The Third Republic, 1870–1940 (Lampeter 2005), 431.
Hanna Diamond, Fleeing Hitler: France 1940 (Oxford 2007).
Pétain, op. cit., 448. 76. Ibid., 454.
Jean Lacouture, François Mauriac (Paris 1980), 360.
Michèle Cointet, Pétain et les Français, 1940–1951 (Paris 2002), 147.
Henri Frenay, La Nuit finira: Mémoires de la Résistance, 1940–1945 (Paris 1973), 38; see also Jean-Paul Cointet, La Légion Française des Combattants (Paris 1995).
Jean Guitton, Pages brûlées: Journal de captivité (Paris 1984), 34; Michèle Cointet, op. cit., 15–24.
von der Goltz & Gildea: Flawed Saviours 46
81. Ibid., 32–4, 185–6.
La Vie du Maréchal: Petit Album à colorier par les enfants de France (Limoges 1944); Laurence Bertrand Dorléac, L’Art de la Défaite, 1940–1944 (Paris 1993), 123–4; Michèle Cointet, op. cit., 166–79.
Fischer, op. cit., 16–17.
Henri Pourrat, Le Chef français (Marseille 1942), 61.
Michèle Cointet, op. cit., 159–60.
Les Jeunes fêtent Jeanne d’Arc: Lyon, 10 mai 1942 (Lyon 1942); Dominique Rossignol, Histoire de la propagande en France de 1940 à 1944: L’utopie Pétain (Paris 1991), 84–6; Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (New Haven and London 1994), 162–3.
A. Ehrard, ‘Vercingétorix contre Gergovie’, in Paul Viallaneix and Jean Ehrard (eds), Nos Ancêtres les Gaulois: Actes du Colloque International de Clermont-Ferrand (Clermont-Ferrand 1982), 313–14; in general see L. Gervereau, ‘Y a-t-il un “style Vichy”?’, in Laurent Gervereau and Denis Peschanski, La Propagande sous Vichy, 1940–1944 (Nanterre 1990), 110–47.
G. Kaufmann, ‘Der Händedruck von Potsdam. Die Karriere eines Bildes’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht. Vol. 48 (1997), 295–315, 305.
Freitag, op. cit., 399–400.
Kaufmann, op. cit., 307.
Völkischer Beobachter, North German edition, no. 305, 31 October 1940.
Hans Habs in New York Times, 8 June 1941.
Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation (London 2002), 322.
Michel Debré, Trois Républiques pour une France : Mémoires (Paris 1984), 308.
Michèle Cointet, op. cit., 264–8; Pierre Laborie, L’Opinion Française sous Vichy (Paris 1990), 298–9.
Le Procès du Maréchal Pétain (Paris 1945), 23–9.
I. Krüger-Bulcke, ‘Der Hohenzollern-Hindenburg-Zwischenfall in Marburg 1947: Wiederaufleben nationalistischer Strömungen oder Sturm im Wasserglas?’, Hessisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte, Vol. 39 (1989), 311–52.
M. Freund, ‘Totengräber eines Kaiserreichs und einer Republik: Paul von Hindenburg’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 24 December 1962; W. Dirks, ‘Rechts und links’, Frankfurter Hefte, Vol. I, no. 6 (1946), 24–37, 25.
E. Wollenberg, ‘Hindenburg der Wegbereiter Hitlers: Der “Feldmarschall-Präsident” als Totengräber der deutschen Demokratie’, in Neue Presse, 4 September 1946, 3.
Friedrich Meinecke, Die deutsche Katastrophe, third edition (Wiesbaden 1947), 97.
Walter Ruge, Hindenburg: Porträt eines Militaristen (Berlin 1975).
Schultze-Pfaelzer to Schwertfeger, 13 October 1946, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, NL15, no. 566, n.p.
P. Sethe, ‘Die Tragödie Paul von Hindenburgs: Die Nation hat ihn überfordert’, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, no. 294, 18 December 1954; ‘Ein armer alter Mann . . . General Hoffman über den Feldmarschall von Hindenburg’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, no. 7, 10 January 1955.
Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley 2001), 34.
Oberhessische Presse, 31 August 1964, copy in Stadtarchiv Marburg, NLBauer, no. 727.
Martin Lüders, Der Soldat und das Reich: Paul von Hindenburg: Generalfeldmarschall und Reichspräsident (Freising 1961), 252.
Jacques Isorni, Souffrance et mort du Maréchal (Paris 1951), 276; Bulletin de l’Association pour Défendre la Mémoire du Maréchal Pétain, 2 (October 1952), 4–7; Jacques Isorni, C’est un péché de la France (Paris 1962).
André Figueras, Pétain et la Résistance (Paris 1989), 93–102.
464 European History Quarterly, 9.
Rémy, ‘La Justice et l’opprobre’, Carrefour, 11 April 1950; Henry Rousso, Le Syndrome de Vichy, 1944–198 . . . (Paris 1987), 45–7.
110. Ibid., 301–4.
Pierre Péan, Une Jeunesse française: François Mitterrand, 1934-1947 (Paris 1994), 197–222.
Henry Rousso and Eric Conan, Vichy: Un Passé qui ne passe pas (Paris 1994). 113. Ibid., 33–65.
Gildea, Marianne in Chains, 391–4.
H.-J. Wirth, ‘Vorwort’, in idem (ed.), Helden. Psychosozial 10 (Weinheim, 1987); Sigmund Freud, Die Traumdeutung (Leipzig and Vienna 1900).
Dietrich Orlow, ‘The Conversion of Myths into Political Power: The Case of the Nazi Party, 1925–1926’, The AHR, Vol. 72, no. 3 (1967), 906–24, 906.
K. Schreiner, ‘“Wann kommt der Retter Deutschlands?” Formen und Funktionen von politischem Messianismus in der Weimarer Republik’, Saeculum, Vol. 49 (1998), 107–60.
See, further, R. Gildea,‘Eternal France: Crisis and National Self-perception in France, 1870–2005’, in Susana Carvalho and François Gemenne (eds), Nations and their Pasts: Representing the Past, Building the Future (London forthcoming 2009).
Walther Hubatsch’s commentary in Erich Marcks, Hindenburg: Feldmarschall und Reichspräsident (Göttingen, Berlin and Frankfurt/M. 1963), 67–8.
M. Weber, ‘Die drei reinen Typen der legitimen Herrschaft’, in idem, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, edited by Johannes Winckelmann, sixth edition (Tübingen 1985), 475–88,
484. For an application to Hindenburg: Pyta, op. cit.
Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 (New York/London 1972), 34.
anna von der goltz (née Menge) is a Junior Research Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford. Her first book Hindenburg: Power, Myth, and the Rise of the Nazis will be published by Oxford University Press in 2009. She is a contributor to the project ‘Around 1968: activism, networks, trajectories’ and also pursuing research on the ‘counter-68ers’, the generation of right-wing students at West German universities around 1968.
robert gildea is Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford. His publications include The Past in French History (New Haven and London 1994), Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation of France, 1940–1945 (London 2002) and Children of the Revolution: The French, 1799–1914 (London 2008). He is currently directing an international project entitled ‘Around 1968: activism, networks, trajectories’.
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