THE PROPAGANDIST

A French historian explores the secrets her family held for decades after World War II.

Coline, Desprairies’ questioning narrator, grew up in 1960s Paris with an enigmatic mother prone to secrecy and inexplicable behavior. The youngest of Lucie’s three children, Coline was often present when a group of her mother’s female relatives would gather in the mornings to talk about beauty, fashion, and their lives as they also made oblique references to some past events that seemed to bind them together. As time passes, Coline pieces together the reason for the secrecy: Her family had collaborated with France’s Nazi occupiers. She traces the work of family members in the Occupation propaganda efforts, including her mother’s enthusiastic talent for sloganeering. Lucie’s first, youthful marriage was driven as much by Nazi ideology as romance. Her memories of and devotion to the late Friedrich loom large in the narrative. (Her second husband, Charles—Coline’s father—appears cipherlike in comparison until an uncharacteristic and unequivocal late-in-the-proceedings show of gumption.) Coline’s matter-of-fact recounting of the familial facts she began gathering, if not understanding, during childhood includes episodes of casual cruelty to Jews and a generalized antisemitism, as well as venal self-interest. Desprairies, a specialist in Germanic civilization and a historian of the Nazi occupation of France, provides extensive background about the shifting alliances and political parties in play during the war years. The narrative is saturated with references to regional French history and notable French wartime figures. Ironically, Coline—a proxy for Desprairies—confesses experiencing youthful confusion about who were the “good guys” and who were the “bad” due to her family’s allegiances.

A sobering account of the confusion and damage wrought by unbridled ideology.