An allegorical-ideological trinity: the beast is dead — the second World War among the animals (1944)

ABSTRACT

During 1941, while France was being crushed under the iron fist of the Third Reich, the cartoonists Edmond François Calvo, and Victor Dancette began work on La Bête est Morte – La guerre Mondiale Chez Les Animaux [The Beast is Dead: The World War Among the Animals]. The two, secretly wrote and drew a cartoon epic that reimagined the history of the French nation during the war and cast animals as the warring nations.

During 1944, a few months after the liberation, the first part of the work was published under the title Quand la Bête est Déchaînée [When the Beast is Unleashed]. The second part appeared a year later, as Quand la Bête est Terrassée [When the Beast is Defeated].

This article presents a literary and ideological discussion of both parts of La Bête est Morte, which is also the first graphic novel written to allegorically depict the Second World War and the Holocaust. The article also examines ways in which La Bête est Morte took part in the establishment and preservation of the Gaullist narrative and of the French collective memory of the war and its events.

Graphical abstract

KEYWORDS:

• World War II
• Holocaust
• ideology
• allegory
• France

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Maginot Line was a French line of defence that starched out for 800 miles. It was constructed over a period of 11 years along the French border with Germany to avert a German invasion. It included scores of fortresses, bunkers, pillboxes, shelters, miles of underground passageways, and other features. The French placed most of their largest fortresses in the northeast part of the line in order to protect the large population, key industries, and natural resources located near the Moselle valley. Despite its strength and elaborate design, the line was unable to prevent German invasion on May 1940.

2. In his book Fighters of the Shadows, Robert Gildea (2015) suggests that the saga of the Résistance is a critical part of French identity. It is not a static and/or self-evident story, but a controversial account that has been revised and edited over time. It was not until 1971 that an opposing national narrative emerged, in which France, rather than acting honourably under occupation, was apathetic and timid and often collaborated with the occupiers.

3. Henri-Philippe Petain (1856–1951) was a military and political French leader, considered French’s greatest WWI hero. From July 11^th, 1940 until August 20^th, 1944 Petain headed the Vichy government of France, a Fascist government that became notorious for its collaboration with Nazi Germany. Petain’s government passed anti-Semitic laws, rounding up French, Spanish and Eastern European Jews for deportation to German concentration camps. After the war, he was sentenced to death for treason, a sentence that was converted to life imprisonment by Charles de Gaulle.

4. The way the argument is presented is the author of this article summary of Schmitt ‘s theory.

5. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen served as one of the foundational documents of the French Revolution (1789). The Declaration was prepared by Gilbert de Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, in collaboration with American President, Thomas Jefferson, and Honoré Gabriel Riqueti (the Comte de Mirabeau).

6. France national flag – three vertical bands: blue, white and red.

7. The first version of the satirical epic Reynard the Fox, known as Ysengrimus, was written as a Latin epic poem around 1150 by Nivardus of Ghent (in present-day Belgium). This epic presented the story of the conflict between Isengrim the wolf, who represents the nobility, and Reynard the fox, who represents the farmers. The epic appeared in Old French in 1174 as Le Roman de Rénart by Pierre de Saint-Cloud.

8. Death.

9. As WWII ended and Holocaust survivors started arriving to Palestine, the Jewish population greeted them with both compassion and resentment. These conflicting responses evolved into the formation of two separate collective memories of the Holocaust. The first was focused on the non-Jewish world outside of Palestine, thereby furthering the struggle towards the establishment of the State of Israel as a justified response to the Holocaust. The second was focused on the Jewish community in Palestine and around the world projecting the image of the strong and proud ‘New Israeli’ and rejecting the image of the ‘diaspora Jews’ who were often described as having gone ‘like sheep to the slaughter’. By the beginning of Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem on 11 April 1961, Israelis were finally able to comprehend and appreciate what Jews from ‘over there’ had truly endured. The stories touched a chord in their hearts and a more sympathetic view of the survivors infiltrated the Israeli collective memory of the Holocaust. Furthermore, the myth of the ghetto fighters and the Jewish partisans replaced the image of the passive and humiliated Jew.

10. This group included three comic books. Le Journal de Mickey (Mickey’s Paper) moved to Marseilles and merged with the children’s weekly Hop-Là (Here we go!). Jumbo merged with Aventure (Adventure) and, beginning in December 1940, was effusive in its praise for Pétain and the Vichy government. Coeurs Vaillants (Valiant Hearts) merged with Ames Vaillants (Valiant Souls) and expressed fervent support for Pétain and his government.

11. During the Occupation, nine periodicals for children and teens were published in Paris, though most lasted only a few months. Notable among them were Gavroche and Fanfan la Tulipe. Fanfan la Tulipe – named for a fictional seventeenth-century French hero – declared complete allegiance to Pétain. A different tack was taken by Le Téméraire (The Bold), which, as of January 1943, was the only children’s newspaper published in Paris. It openly embraced a pro-German and pro-Fascist ideology, advocated racism and antisemitism, and trumpeted anti-Russian, anti-British, and anti-American sentiments.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Levinsky College of Education [Centre of Research].

Notes on contributors

Yaakova Sacerdoti

Dr. Yaakova Sacerdoti is the Head of the Literature and Children’s Literature Department at Levinsky College of Education in Israel.

Her new book Melody of Fate: The Holocaust in Comic Books during the 1940s and 1950s was published in Israel in December 2018.

Sacerdoti authored the book Together and Separately as Well – on the Child and the Adult Addresses in Children’s Literature(Ha'Kibutz Ha'Meuchad, 2000) and the textbook series for English speakers -Merging Voices- on Israeli literature and society. Her articles on children literature and Israeli literature were published in academic journals around the world.

Sacerdoti taught at the University of Michigan for ten years headed the Hebrew Language and Literature Department at The Frankel Jewish Academy in Detroit.