The Power of Small Elites and the Death of Republics

The Extremely Wealthy Who Cannot put the Interest of the Nation above their Own

American CBS Correspondent William Shirer Reporting on the French Surrender to Germany on 22 June 1940 at Compiegne

Mark Twain reportedly said that “history doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes”. I find many parallels with the times that we are living in history. If you read my work or follow me elsewhere you know that I am a historian and retired military officer, author, theologian, and ethicist, and that I can find a million ways to Sunday to make connections to those parallels.

Tonight is another. It deals with how small elites in France from the late 1920s to the Nazi defeat of France in June 1940, succeeded in overthrowing a Republic that they hated. They hated democracy. They hated the concepts of Liberté, égalité, fraternité, or liberty, equality and fraternity. They were extravagantly wealthy, and their wealth made them despise their country and love its enemies. These people hated the Jews, and they hated immigrants, likewise they hated the free press and labor unions. Many were fascists and admired Hitler and Mussolini, while others were ultra-Conservative Catholics who wanted to return the Church to the exalted status and power it had before the French Revolution. They stirred political turmoil and even tried to use violence to overthrow the Republic long before France ever fell to the Nazis.

Today the United States is being threatened by a tiny minority of oligarchs, far more powerful than those who used their power to weaken the French Republic, and infiltrate its government and military so much that when the German found and exploited its weaknesses, it fell, that they rejoiced and willingly collaborated with the enemy under the Vichy regime. But to really understand you need to read William Shirer’s masterpiece, The Collapse of the Third Republic: an Inquiry into the Fall of France 1940. He also wrote the classics The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and Berlin Diary.

Shirer, who was an American newspaper and radio correspondent based in Europe in the 1930s to December 1940. He finally fled Germany as the Gestapo was closing in on him. But, for all of his writings from and about Hitler’s Germany, I think that his book on the fall of the French Third Republic has more relevance to us today.

Today, the American Republic faces a crisis that will determine if it will survive without becoming a totalitarian state in which the legislative and judicial branches are subordinated to the executive branch and an imperial presidency, and the overwhelming power of an elite oligarchy of industrialists, land owners, and bankers. The parallels between the Third Republic and the United States are many, especially in the attitudes of the economic elites and their responsibility to the Nation.

Shirer’s The Collapse of the Third Repubic is a massive work of great significance. Shirer was one of the first to gain access to the records of the Third Republic and to interview its political and military leaders in the years after the Second World War. For me, the most interesting part of this work is how many parallels there are between the French Third Republic in the 1920s and 1930s as there are in contemporary American life, culture, and politics. Those comparisons are too many to discuss in a short article like this, but there was one point that struck me as particularly important was the attitude of wealthy to the existence of the Republic itself. The Hobbesian attitude of the wealthy conservative classes in the Third Republic was not terribly different than many in the United States today, men and women who value their wealth and privilege above the very country that they call home and which helps to subsidize their existence.

Shirer wrote about the wealthy French citizens who had been saved by the sacrifice of four out of every ten French men in the First World War, the physical destruction of much of the country, and the debt incurred by nation during the which often benefited the people and the businesses which profited during, who in turn abandoned the Republic during its hour of need. Shirer wrote:

“The power of a small elite which possessed most of the wealth was greater than the power of the republican government elected by the people, presumably to run the country in the interest of all the citizens. This group was determined to preserve its privileged position and thus its money. In effect, since the triumph of the Republic over President MacMahon there had been a virtual alliance between the possessor class and the Republic, which it manipulated through its control of the Press, the financing of political parties, and the handling of its vast funds to influence the fiscal policies of government.”

While the attitude and actions of the wealthy French business leaders became apparent in the 1870s and 1880s, it reached its fullness after the First World War, as the elites grew resentful of the costs that had been born by the Army and national to protect them. Shirer wrote:

“And more and more, as the last years of the Third Republic ticked off, the wealthy found it difficult to put the interest of the nation above that of their class. Faced with specific obligations to the country if the state were not to flounder in a financial morass, they shrank from meeting them. The Republic might go under but their valuables would be preserved. In the meantime they would not help keep it afloat by paying a fair share of the taxes. The tax burden was for others to shoulder. If that were understood by the politicians, the Republic could continue. If not… were there not other forms of government possible which promised more security for entrenched wealth? The thoughts of some of the biggest entrepreneurs began to turn to the Fascist “experiment” in Italy and to the growing success of the Nazi Party in Germany.”

The French business elites, as well as their conservative allies hated the Republic so much that they were unwilling to support it and worked to destroy it, even if that meant overthrowing it and establishing an authoritarian state. When the Germans defeated the French in 1940, many of these political and business leaders embraced the Nazis and supported the Vichy state. They were even willing to surrender true freedom and independence, becoming subservient to the Nazis in order to destroy the Republic.

I believe that the French example serves as warning for us today when we see government and business leaders working to destroy the institutions that define our republic and are there to protect its citizens. Thus, Shirer’s book is an important and timely read for Americans today.

Marshal Petain warmly greets Hitler

There is much more in the book, including justified criticism of the French left of the time, but I will finish with this today. General Weygand, who led the French armies during the final phase of the German campaign against France despised the Republic. When it fell he said. “I didn’t get the Boches, but I got the regime.” A more traitorous comment could not have been uttered by a soldier. Sadly, there are some Trump supporters in senior military positions who are much like Weygand.

Vichy France’s Prime Minister Pierre Laval with the SS Police Commander in France Obergrüppenfuhrer Carl Oberg, the “Butcher of Paris”

One of the few dissenting legislators to the dissolution of the Third Republic by Marshal Petain and Prime Mister Laval, Senator Boivin-Champeaux noted:

“It is not without sadness that we shall bid adieu to the Constitution of 1875. It made France a free country…. It died less from its imperfections than from the fault of men who were charged with guarding it and making it work.”

Today those men include Donald Trump and his Republican colleagues, the oligarchs who back them, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel and others. They also include those, including prominent Democrats who would rather try to collaborate with them and their totalitarian ideas, rather then uphold their oaths, or supposed principles to maintain whatever political power they have.

I cannot do that. I will write, speak, teach and resist. I hope that you too will resist, because ultimately Trump, his Cult, and the oligarchs will lead the United States to ruin, and it will be for us to rebuild it upon those ruins.