JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 391
This curious pamphlet surfaced today—an “expose” on the post-war automobile industry in France; I was curious to see how soon after the war this was published, and then was momentarily shocked to see that it was published in 1943, while France was still heavily occupied by the Nazis. And then of course I knew why there was any possibility of publishing something like this concerning a huge industry during a time of occupation (when things are normally ground to a halt): that the French people concerned with this effort had to have been at least part of the puppet Vichy government of Marshall Petain or were (also) Nazi collaborators. My vote would have been both. The author, Francois Lehideux, who died ten years ago at age 94 (1904-1998), was the head of the French automobile organization and working at the pleasure of the onerous Petain, and was in fact arrested in 1945 as a Nazi collaborator once the real French were back in power. (Lehideux was released a year later for lack of evidence, or something along those lines, though I am sure, like O.J., that everyone knew the true story. Petain, a glorious and important military leader of WWI, a heroic and towering figure, died in senility and was buried on the prison island he was sent to after his death sentence for his traitorous behavior was commuted. He lived to be 95.) Lehideux lived a long and trying and no doubt prosperous life. He was CEO of Renault (having married the founder’s niece in 1934), and then “worked” for the Vichy government (for which he received the meritorious Order of the Francisque, as did Francois Mitterand), was imprisoned, and then when he was released went to work for another organization comfortable with the Nazis, Ford Motor Corp. Maybe it was just old Henry--who was a fantastically bad anti-Semite and who received the highest civilian decorator from Adolf Hitler (an award he held on to)—and not the Company that was bad. Certainly Ford was not the morally-abusive capitalist who behaved intolerably during the war, as there were plenty of those: Occidental Petroleum, Brown Brothers Harriman (run in part by Prescott Bush (yes), who was convicted and fined under the Trading with the Enemy Act in 1943), Chase Bank, and many others.
As Lehideux slipped closer to the grave he headed an organization that tried to rehabilitate the image of Petain; long story short, Lehideux could not leave his own sordid past alone, and while trying to cleanse himself by scrubbing up the traitorous and offal-stained Petain, was embroiled in and won a freedom-of-speech lawsuit regarding his adoration for the old dead meat-puppety pisspot. His “victory” was certainly odd and I’m sure that in his own mind his life during the war was vindicated, his role reversed to having helped France arise from the ashes. But all that happened really was that he was told that he could write what he thought, and nothing more. In effect he created a fourth referential gender category (as in der/die/das etc): zed. Nothing. I think he just became nothing in his victory. Or nothing until he was dead, and then he was at least that, which is a step-up from nothingness; but while he lived, the man was nothing. Except of course to the people in France who were injured or killed as a result of his compliances with the Nazis, and then he was less than nothing and should’ve become dead sooner. But I think he made himself into less and less until he finally achieved nothingness.
Finding and paying attention to extremely ephemeral and dead pamphlets like this can be very stimulating, and rewarding; they can make you aware of points of view and thought that you never knew existed, and can hold nuggets to odd pathways of thinking that can only be excited by something similarly odd. Sometimes all you need is a little piece of exposed ephemeral thread; and then all you have to do is pull it.
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