1941.03.08 “Not Entirely Weaponless”
by Lucius Curtis “Lute” Pease, Jr. (1869 -1963)
15 x 18 in., ink on heavy paper
Coppola Collection
Pease was a cartoonist for the Newark Evening News from 1914 to 1954, and received the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. He was a miner in Alaska for 5 years before beginning a career in art. He was an illustrator for the Oregonian and famously interviewed Mark Twain. From his retirement in 1954 until his death in 1963, he devoted himself to fostering his skills as a painter of portraits and landscapes.
The sense of Vichy France that you get in the film Casablanca seems quite accurate. After the fall of Paris, the Franco-German armistice essentially divided France in two. The northern zone would be fully occupied by the Germans, while the south would be allowed to remain under French control, albeit French collaborationist control. This puppet government set itself up in the city of Vichy, hence the name of the regime. Its leaders, most famously Pierre Laval, Marshal Petain and Francois Darlan, were opportunists.
Major Strasser (Casablanca): Captain, are you entirely certain which side you are on?
Captain Renault: I have no conviction, if that's what you mean. I blow with wind, and the prevailing wind happens to be from Vichy.
Petain pulled a war hero from WW1, Maxime Weygand, back into service as Defense Minister (June 1940). Weygand viewed colonial France, particularly Africa, as an eventual springboard for the Allied liberation of continental France. This was the same policy advocated by de Gaulle’s Free French from London.
While it is correct that much of the Vichy government did collaborate, to the worst degree, with German occupiers and Nazi doctrine, others like Weygand had better intentions. He had hoped to protect his people from the misery of occupation, and to join the Allies when the time came. Thanks to political friction and based upon his love of Africa, Weygand was appointed as the chief of the Vichy operations there in October 1940.
In February 1941, Hitler sent the Afrika Korps, commanded by General Rommel, to bolster Mussolini after his troubles moving “the new Roman Empire” into North Africa. The German counter-offensive pushed the British back to the Egyptian frontier.
Negotiations between the US and Vichy, through Weygand, led to the Murphy–Weygand Agreement, February 26, 1941, which allowed the United States to export to French North Africa in spite of the British blockade and trade restrictions against the Vichy-governed area.
From the New York Times, March 8, 1941: PETAIN REAFFIRMS FAITH IN WEYGAND; Colonial Army Commander to Return to African Post by Plane Tomorrow ADVISES VICHY OFFICIALS Delegate General Makes Full Report on Men, Materiel and Morale in His Domain
Dismissed in November 1941, Weygand went into exile at Cannes in the south of France. The German SS arrested him on November 12, 1942, after the Allies invaded North Africa and the angry Nazis seized unoccupied France in retaliation. Handcuffed, the aging four-star general was taken to custody, where he started writing the first volume of his memoirs. He and his wife were liberated by the US Army in 1945.
In Paris and now pro-Gaullist, Weygand testified on Marshal Petain’s behalf at his trial and was acquitted at his own on May 6, 1948, after which he recovered both his rank and his former assets. He spent his remaining years as a prolific author and died at the age of 99 in 1965.
