We have never spoken in Berlin and our relations with Germany that week. Berlin and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Franco-German friendship and the presence of Angela Merkel, the Arc de Triomphe, and finally old statements by the New Berlin NDiaye, our new Prix Goncourt on the monstrosity of France in 2009.
This is great because in this week full of celebrations, I just close the last chapter of a historical thriller that begins precisely on 11 November, the year 1940. A thriller that I could title "Paris to the German time," indeed. As the Paris of the years of occupation saw the time zone of Berlin. The Paris (and France) the dark years, it is also a curfew at 23:00, they are warnings and raid shelters, they are the roundups of Jews, resistance fighters and communists, a collaborationist press, a population entirely devoted to Pétain (including in April 1944 when tens of thousands of cheering Parisians), are the queues at the shops, "toeing" which are sold to the German Reichsmark for some, it is torture Lauristion Street and Avenue Foch, Mont Valerian executions and Chateaubriand, the massacres of Maille and Oradour-sur-Glane. In short, a monstrous period, which historians have not finished analyzing and dissecting. Yes, the France of the 40s was monstrous.
The France of 2009 she resembles that of 1940? Beyond the controversy is the question that seems to be NDiaye. But perhaps because she, after all. For France in 1939 did not seem especially monstrous to his contemporaries. To think ...
We will never spoken Berlin and our relations with Germany this week. And so much more ...
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