Laughter as a weapon of the Resistance to discredit the German occupier.
Historian Alya Aglan presented Thursday at the Mémorial de Caen a book on a little-studied theme of the Second World War.
Laughter or Life - Anthology of Resistance Humor 1940-45
(Folio), the first book, according to its author, to focus on the humor of the Resistance.
The book brings together texts and illustrations from the archives of Free France to highlight the role of humor in times of war in opposition to authoritarian regimes.
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Professor of contemporary history at the Sorbonne and specialist in the history of the Resistance, Alya Aglan describes laughter
as "the weapon of the weak"
which
"requires few means, but a lot of courage"
.
However, as the historian explains,
“humor is very serious”
.
It allows "
to oppose the force
" of the invader, "
when we see the Germans parading every day on the Champs-Élysées
" explains Alya Aglan to AFP, on the sidelines of a conference on this theme.
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Draw strokes of humor
Caricatures, songs, poems, all formats are used.
They notably take the form of a swastika structured with the name of the collaborator Pierre Laval or a drawing ironically wondering if
“an Aryan is indeed a blond guy like
Hitler
, thin like
Goering
and tall like
Goebbels
”
.
Less ironically, a pastiche transforms the motto of the Vichy regime
“Travail, Famille, Patrie”
into
“Tracas, Famine, Patrol”
.
Finally, other formats are emerging, such as this fake radio interview by Pierre Dac with the head of the Vichy government, Pierre Laval,
“who is not going very well”
after the Allied landings.
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Used from the first weeks of the Occupation,
"at a time when it was forbidden to sing, to show off, forbidden to do anything"
, these satires were printed in Free France or in the
"sheets"
of resistance fighters in occupied France.
“
This humor sends the Nazis back to their own racism and morbidity, it is about laughing at this regime with your own eyes
”, explains Alya Aglan.
"It's a universal reflex against barbarism
," continues the academic.
We find it in Ukraine in 2022 with
“the road signs indicating the
court in The Hague
for Russian soldiers”
or in Syria with the story
“of a father who taught his daughter to laugh at the passage of bombers”
.
"The humor in the summer of 1940 is not that of 44, much darker, sarcastic, because the behavior of the Germans is more tragic"
explains the historian.
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