Occupation-era French intellectuals cultivated deliberate rudeness toward Germans as patriotic resistance

Evidence

Back in Paris, it was important to stay mindful of how dangerous the occupiers were — something easy to forget if you were not among their direct targets. Sartre wrote of how the Germans ‘gave up their seats to old ladies in the Métro, they showed affection to children and stroked their cheeks’. What’s more, he added, ‘do not go imagining that the French showed them a crushing air of contempt’ — though they did venture small discourtesies when they could, as a way of preserving self-respect. Jean Guéhenno’s diary recorded times when he deliberately failed to give directions on the street to Germans, or gave them rudely, in a way he would never normally do. Merleau-Ponty noted the difficulty he had in overcoming the rules of good manners that he had learned in childhood, but he too forced himself to be rude as a patriotic duty. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 472

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing interest in small acts of decorum and their weight; being deliberately rude to Germans was a form of moral self-respect under occupation. — connects to: Small symbolic defiances sustained French morale under Occupation — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 469; Sincere Nazi intellectuals were discarded by the regime; Anti-Orientalists often relied on the very German scholarship they condemned — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists…, 574 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Anti-Orientalists often relied on the very German scholarship they condemned #complicates (0.78) — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 574
• Sincere Nazi intellectuals were discarded by the regime #complicates (0.75)
• German and French race-thinking served opposite political purposes #expands (0.72)
• Etymological speculation links the word mafia to anti-French resistance #exemplifies (0.72) — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 697
• Religious minority status compounded the government’s suspicion of Germans #qualifies (0.72)