Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family, Fatherland and Vichy France

by Carmen Callil

Book Overview

Bad Faith tells the story of one of history's most despicable villains and con men--Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, Nazi collaborator and "Commissioner for Jewish Affairs" in France's Vichy... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375411313
• ISBN13: 9780375411311
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 607 Pages
• Weight: 2.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.9" x 6.6" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Bad faith and a bad couple

A very readable, and personal examination of an individual family experience before, and during the German occupation of France. It focuses primarily on Louis Darquier and his spouse Myrtle Jones - about as loathsome a couple as can be found. There is really not much one can say that is remotely positive about these two. The author examines the historical genealogy of both. Louis's origins are from Cahors in France and Myrtle from Tasmania (the island at the bottom of Australia). What is so striking is they are both the bad apples of their families (who said opposites attract?). The other family member's became self-sufficient and successful in their respective societies. Admittedly Louis's family had a difficult time during the occupation and his brother Jean collaborated too closely with the Vichy regime. Louis Darquier was a complete "loser". Louis was never able to support himself; he constantly borrowed large sums of money from his family which he never returned. For him, and his wife Myrtle, lying was not second nature - it was their way of life. From this perspective they were soul-mates. They only knew how to spend money extravagantly - they constantly lived in hotels and ate out. They had a child which they promptly abandoned. During the 1930's after Hitler came to power - Louis found his calling and became involved with right-wing anti-Semitic groups. He published a great deal of repulsive hate literature propaganda - anti-Semitic and repetitive. He established many contacts in this under-world. At this stage much of his money was coming directly from Nazi Germany, so at least he was not so dependent on his family. He and Myrtle continued living the high life in hotels and restaurants. After the fall of France in the summer of 1940 this underworld ascended to real political power and Louis pontificated at the head of several anti-Semitic organizations. These were involved in the deportation of Jews to Germany - most were killed in concentration camps. There were many children among the victims. Even though this is a dismal story it is extremely well told and illuminating. It puts a human face on a particular person who did horrible crimes. To his dying day in Spain this anti-Semitism was very alive in Louis Darquier. It would be interesting to speculate on why anti-Semitism became such an important part of Louis life during the 1930's. Prior to this, it was not a significant focal point in his life. It is possible that Louis simply latched onto this as a money-getting scheme - being the opportunist that he was. A very sad aspect of this story is the daughter they abandoned in England. She became a psychiatrist and helped many of her patients - one of them being the author of this book. Unfortunately she self-destructed and died at the age of forty. She was morbidly disillusioned with both her parents. This detailed story gives one a greater understanding of Vichy France and the agony of a country under occupation. Louis was

Unbelieveably interesting

This is very scholarly book but never boring. It is a fascinating look at an evil man. I was sad to come to the end of it, I enjoyed it so much.

Excellent, but with a caveat

Fascinating as a history of anti-Semitism in France. The author, however, is off-putting in the first section of the book. So much time and space is evoted to the family background in Australia, and the detail is so involved, that there is a temptation to put the book down and forget about it. But skip through this intial section and it becomes more and more revealing and exciling and gruesome as we learn of this wretched bunch of French fascists fighting among themselves to rid their country of a tiny minority on whom they blame all their social ills. Stanly B. Dickes

Brilliant read

In this eye-opening account of the Holocaust and the Second World War in France and the interwar years in that country we are given a great insight into the life of Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, who himself is partly a symbol of France itself or perhaps the underbelly of Franc. Louise Darquier was a minor Frenchman from a small town south of Paris and had served in World War One. He had a plethora of family members and contacts but he chose to marry a strange and slightly insane English woman and spend the post-war years wandering the world to Australia and the U.K. Having evnetually settled in France in the 1930s he became a rabid anti-semite and befriended the various right wing veterans movements fighting in the streets agains the government of Leon Blum. When Vichy fell in 1940 the Nazis plucked him out of obscurity to head up the department of Jewish affairs. He set to work extorting Jews and eventually deporting them to their deaths. At the end of the war he fled to Spain where he lived out the rest of his years into the 1970s. He never gave up his anti-Semitism, eventually turning it into anti-Israel rhetoric. This is a brilliant popular book, an investigation of family and life, a true picture of an age and a tragedy. This book reads like fiction, and could have been such if it were not a true story based one exhaustive research. THe Footnotes are veritable encyclopedia of inter-war french anti-semitism. Seth J. Frantzman

BOOK REVIEW: `Bad Faith' Reminds Us How Anti-Semitic Many French Were in 1930s, WW II; Catholic Hie

By David M. Kinchen Huntington News Network Book Critic I don't envy the John Le Carres, Frederick Forsyths, Robert Harrises and Len Deightons of the literary world, trying to come up with characters for their political thrillers that even come close to matching the real thing. Carmen Callil has crafted a nonfiction thriller in "Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family, Fatherland and Vichy France" (Knopf, 640 pages, illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, appendixes, index) that reminds us that the Germans weren't alone in their efforts to wipe out the Jews of what British historian Mark Mazower has aptly called "The Dark Continent" - Europe. Vichy France - named for the spa city which served as its capital - was more like Franco's Spain than Hitler's Germany, in Callil's assessment. It is necessary to remember that although he was anti-Semitic in the conservative Roman Catholic tradition, Francisco Franco never participated in the Holocaust. Franco did provide sanctuary for many French war criminals, including Louis Darquier (1897-1980), a rabid anti-Semite and "Commissioner for Jewish Affairs" for the Vichy collaborationist regime from 1942 to 1944. Movie fans will remember the regime from "Casablanca" (1943) set in a French Morocco ruled by Vichy before the Allied Invasion of North Africa. Real movie buffs will recall a marvelous documentary by filmmaker Marcel Ophuls called "Le Chagrin et la pitie" ("The Sorrow and the Pity") depicting life in the Vichy French town of Clermont-Ferrand, focusing on French participation in the Holocaust. Clermont-Ferrand is the hometown of Blaise Pascal and the founders of the Michelin tire firm and is the headquarters of Michelin. The 1970, 270-minute film (it's the best documentary ever made in the view of many critics - and in my opinion) was how Callil, born in Australia in 1938 and living in London when she met Dr. Anne Darquier, made the connection between her therapist - Anne Darquier -- who was only eight years older than Callil and the Holocaust. In a true tale that sounds stranger than fiction, Carmen Callil, founder in 1972 of the Virago Press and later managing director of Chatto & Windus, an English publisher, learned of Anne Darquier's connection with Vichy France from watching "The Sorrow and the Pity" in London. In the film, Darquier meets Reinhard Heydrich, whom many consider the Nazi behind the "Final Solution" that led to the extermination of 6 million human beings of the Jewish faith and millions more who were gypsies, Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses and - yes--Masons. The French, driven by Catholic hatred of a competing cult, were fiercely against Freemasonry and Darquier shared this prejudice. The meeting took place in May 1942; Heydrich was assassinated in Prague on June 4, 1942. The Germans massacred the entire town of Lidice, Czechoslovakia in reprisal for the assassination of Heydrich, born in 1904 and rumored to have had a Jewish grandparent. Heydrich was dubbed the "Blo