Description
First Published in 1998. Weisberg provides a comprehensive account of the French legal system's complicity with its German occupiers during the dark period known as 'Vichy'. Drawing on archival sources, personal interviews, and historical research, this book reveals how legalized persecution operated on a practical level, often exceeding German expectations. All while comparing the Vichy experience to American legal precedents and practices, opening the possibility that postmodern modes of thinking ironically adopt the complexity of Vichy reasoning to a host of reading and thinking strategies.
Table of Contents
Introduction: On the Continuing Myth of Vichy; Chapter 1 Léon Blum, The “Stranger” at Riom: Legalized Ostracism and Vichy’s Political Trial; Chapter 2 The Basic Scheme of Ostracism; Chapter 3 The Special Treatment of Jewish Legal Professionals; Chapter 4 Barthélemy: A Catholic Prewar Liberal Is Called to Vichy; Chapter 5 The Fight to Control the Legal Fate of Jews: Administrators versus Magistrates; Chapter 6 Out-Naziing the Masters; Chapter 7 Property Law; Chapter 8 The Professional Lives of Private Lawyers; Chapter 9 Reforming the Courts, Reforming the Law: Denationalization, Special Sections, et al.; Chapter 10 Why Lawyers Underperformed: Xenophobia, Catholicism, and the Talmudic Outsider;
