BUILDING SITES OF YOUTH
1940-1944
BASE Of LARGE
POLICY OF YOUTH
"released France can change the words and the terms but it will be able to build usefully only on the bases which I threw".
(Pétain Marshal - July 23, 1945)
In this tragedy at the end of June 1940 the summer is splendid, but France is with ground! Crushed by the defeat, it saw a national tragedy. Demoralized and as given up, the French are plunged in the distress. The disaster is immense: the disorder is everywhere, the majority of the trains do not roll more, the roads are bottled, exhausted fuel stocks; several million refugees, installed under the precarious conditions, cannot return to their homes; the supply becomes difficult, the rationing of certain products is essential; nearly two million soldiers are prisoners, the arms miss to carry out the agricultural work, the economy is paralysed, two thirds of the territory are occupied; the line of demarcation divides France in two. Innumerable particular dramas are added: hundred thousand families are in mourning of one as of their killed in the engagements.
Coming from Bordeaux, Via Clermont-Ferrand, the government of Marshal PETAIN gathers painfully in Vichy.
However the population accomodates with an immense relief the armistice which has been just signed and grants of an almost unanimous dash its confidence to the Marshal considered as the saver of the Fatherland.
It is in this situation of great confusion that the government of the Marshal must solve - in the "almost total improvisation - the very many difficulties which arise urgently. One of them, which cannot suffer the least delay relates to the fate of the four twenty ten thousand built-in young people at the end of May and at the beginning of June 40, which did not receive any reserve training and which pursuant to the Convention of Armistice it is obligatory to demobilize immediately.
In ' effect, a very great number of called, which found the deposits of the closed regiments, wander with the adventure through the country without the least framing. Generally stripped almost all and not having any contact with their family they are anxious of their immediate fate and in prey with the distress.
Without delay, a solution should be found.
As of July 3, 1940, the Minister for Defense entrusts to the General of the DOOR OF the THEIL the responsibility to deal with these men. It is the starting point of the "Building sites" but it is also the starter of an experiment which will be at the origin of a great policy of Youth. Polytechnician and former Police chief of Scouts de France, the General of the DOOR OF the THEIL has the idea to divide the young people of this quota given up in camps to install in full nature, out of the barracks and the cities. This idea is officialized on July 31 by a decree signed by the Marshal deciding that the young people called will be versed for one six months period in "Groupings of Youth". On this date, it is yet only about one measurement of circumstance which however will be included soon within the framework of a vaster organization.
The first instruction specifies that "the organization of the Groupings of Youth proposes to give the young men of France, all confused classes, a complement of moral and virile education which, the best gifted ones will make heads and of all of the men healthy, honest, communicant in the enthusiasm of the same national faith".
The Marshal and his government are conscious that to ensure the rectification of France, it is necessary, initially, to be based on youth; that this one needs one faith to which it will give with all the enthusiasm of its age.
The principles and the means of education are thus defined:
"the moral formation is to be sought primarily in the worship of the honor and of the joint life.
"the virile formation which creates besides a happy predisposition to the moral development, is attached to the physical drive.
"the life in contact of nature must support this double discipline.
The official directives specify that the "Building sites" must, according to the places and of the circumstances, to bring their contests for a share of their time:
O with forest work,
O with the manufacture of the charcoal,
O with the handing-over in culture of the grounds,
O with the agricultural work for the period of great work,
O with road work,
O with the fire control of forest.
Progressively months the organization of the Groupings of Youth improves and it is the law of January 18 1941 which gives to the Building sites French Youth their final statute.
From now on all the twenty years old French residing in free zone will be held to carry out eight month a National Service.
June 29, 1941 in Vichy Marshal PETAIN solemnly gives their National Flag to the Building sites of Youth during an imposing ceremony gathering an enthusiastic crowd. The Flag is deposited with the Museum of the Army since 1970.
Thus from 1940 to 1944, in spite of the defeat and the occupation, four hundred and fifty thousand young French framed by twenty thousand heads accepted thanks to the "Building sites" a physical, civic formation and morals which gave them the taste of the life in the open air, the respect of nature, the direction of the team work and the love of their country.
There the Pétain Marshal leaves clearing of Randan after having given a flag to the Companions of France.
When one analyzes the activity deployed with the Building sites of Youth during these four difficult years one cannot prevent oneself from admiring how much the government Marshal knew, with a half century in advance, to design and practise a true policy of ecology.
The experiment of the Building sites was also undertaken in North Africa. Six groupings were created there. They allowed, as of the unloading combined in November 1942, the mobilization of fifty thousand young people. After a very short military formation, those formed a significant part of the French Task force which fought in Tunisia, in Italy, in France and Germany.
If one wants to make an objective assessment on the policy followed by the Marshal it is absolutely necessary to try to imagine what would be occurred with the French population if a significant part of its youth - could not have been gathered, formed and assigned to work essential with the life of the country.
The Building sites of Youth constituted without question a great success. It was even "the greatest social success" of the Vichy government. Success returns from there to a very large extent to the exceptional personality of the General of the DOOR of the THEIL. But it is also due to the active participation of the young people themselves and the quality of their heads.
But if the Building sites are of a great weight in the policy of the Marshal much of other initiatives were taken by the Secretariat-general of Youth directed by George LAMIRAND. Great civic services were created which the young people answered with enthusiasm. As of July 28, 1940, it is the creation of the "Companions of France", organization gathering, on a purely private basis, of the boys from sixteen to twenty years of all social origins decided "to take part in the material and moral raising of the country by offering their contest to the Services of Assistances to the Refugees, the prisoners of war and generally to all initiatives suitable to associate the young people the service of the country". They counted approximately thirty thousand members.
The "Rural Civic Service" gathered on its side more than one hundred thousand old young people of ten seven to twenty and ' one year which took an active part in great work of the harvests and the grape harvest partly replacing the hundreds of thousands of captive farmers in Germany.
The "Center of young workers" accepted young people without work, eager to acquire a vocational training, physical and civic. The "National Help" accepted for its part the contest of thousands of young people to help it in its works of assistance and charity.
The policy of the Marshal also endeavoured to maintain and develop in free zone the various youth movements.
Scouting passed from forty thousand to a hundred and twenty thousand members.
The Catholic Association of French Youth, the Inns of Youth and the Comrades of the Road accepted an effective support of the State. To also announce the creation of the School of the Executives of Uriage intended to form the future elite of it nation.
It is not exaggerated to affirm that if there is a field in which the word "resistance" can validly be used it is well that concerning the policy of the Marshal in favour of youth. Thanks to measurements taken the young people did not despair of their country, forged a heart and prepared, actively with the raising of France while being protected on the whole of the threats from the occupant.
For forty five years no government has dared to take as a starting point the the remarkable experiment of the Building sites because regarded as "a realization of Vichy '!"
The Research and Studies Center of the General Institute of the Door of Theil animated by the old ones of the Building sites realized in 1982 a remarkable study on the National Service recommending its distribution in civil national service and military national service. It would not be convenient and judicious pour the political formation which defends over all the national cause to be inspired some to prepare and propose with the country which for of feels the need a really constructive reform.
That one agrees to give in honor the principle which constituted the rule of the Building sites "' To substitute the direction of the effort for the worship of comfort and the conscience of the duties to the claim of the rights" and it is not doubtful that the youth of France could then find a new breath.
" When I see passing a green and gray grouping of the Building sites of Youth or a dark blue file of the Companions or when I listen to in a family center a choral society of small apprentices carrying out with ease a song for several voices, writing Daniel Rops, I ask whether that is not more significant than all remainder, and if they are not right those which says, with an insistence sometimes a little wearying, that there are the foundations of France of tomorrow ".
From the summer 1940, the youth movements took a significant place in the national life. For the General Lafont, head of Scouts de France, they are "the essential auxiliaries of the family and the school; the young people make there the training of the discipline, obedience and the authority which is devoted ".
From a seventh in 1940, the population of the "framed" young people passes to a third in 1942, which represents for the Southern zone approximately three million young people from 14 to 20 years.
Thanks to the Pétain marshal and the services of the youth of Vichy, the plurality of the youth movements was respected and failed the efforts of embrigadement of youth. These efforts were tried mainly in zone occupied under the aegis of the politicians and the journalists who led to the adoption of the model that youth hitlérienne represented.
Until the end, the Marshal managed to make apply his principle: "a linked youth, but not of single youth".
We will evoke successively
- scouting,
- movements of catholic action and Protestant youth,
- "Young France",
- inns of youth and houses of youth,
- Companions of France,
- national Teams.
In September 1940, are federate within the "French Scouting", chaired by the General Lafont, five associations existing in 1939: "Scouts of France", nondenominational, "Unionistic Scouts" of Protestant inspiration, "Scouts de France", catholics and "Scouts israélites".
The manpower of the scouts increases by 1940 to 1944 from 42.000 to 160.000.
Scouting is an organization strongly hierarchical with its system of troops and patrols, as well as the engagement consisted the promise.
The method of education scoute comprises "the return to nature" with the camp-site which hardens the muscles, and the "great play", which discharges natural aggressiveness from the teenagers, with also the attention paid to the provincial folklore which anchors the young people in the country of their ancestors, with "the campfire", which welds the teams at the time of taken care, "this palaver honest and free", where one learns how to know itself, to estimate itself,
as of the plays of education sensory and manual which make it possible to break with the intellectualist character of traditional education.
The ideology scoute, containing patriotism, of religious faith, respect of the family, corporatism and elitism corresponded perfectly to the values recommended by the Marshal.
As of the summer of 1940, the movement scout becomes a true seedbed of heads for the youth movements, the Companions of France, the Building sites of Youth, like for certain offices of the Secretariat-general to Youth.
In Northern zone, if scouting is interdict because of its style judged far too military, it does not disappear from it therefore, but it ground. The instruction is for each scout to make at his place a pole and a flag, and to daily achieve the ritual gesture of the hello to the Colors.
When scouting manages to continue the framing of the young unemployed in particular, it is under the aegis of a new organization, the "Sully Committee", organizer of the rural civic service, that it does it.
The adhesion of scouting to the national Revolution does not have anything of surprising, one and the other being over the same ideological wavelength.
Andre Basdevant, secretary-general of French Scouting, indicates that "the scouts did not hesitate to join the Secretariat-general Youth because" the Sector Youth "is in the healthiest Vichy" of all ".
With that the need was added for safeguarding the educational movements of the German interference by making obstacle with the recognition by the State of the political youth movements without speaking about the possibility given to Scouts to be opposed to the Jews youth movements, which they obtain temporarily and to make recognize the incompatibility of adhesion at the same time to scouting and the militia.
But since 1942, the idylle between scouting and the government are seriously compromised: petainist, the movement is neither racist, nor collaborationnist.
MOVEMENTS Of CATHOLIC ACTION AND OF PROTESTANT YOUTHFounded in 1886 per Albert de Mun, the catholic Association of French Youth (A.C.J.F.) had decided, in order to proceed to "the apostolate of similar by the similar one", to form five specialized professional federations: Working Youths (J.O.C.) - Agricultural (J.A.C.) - Coed (J.E.C.) Maritime (J.M.C.) and Independent (J.I.C.), each one of these federations having early made create female branches, all applying the same educational method: "See, to judge, act (to discover the medium, to judge in the light of the Christian ideal, to engage).
As of before the war, the A.C.J.F. had denounced the Nazism openly. Folded up in Lyon after the armistice, because prohibited in Northern zone, it continues to do it by publishing the "Books of our youth".
The J.O.C. groups within its federations of the young workers from 14 to 25 years to which it offers various services: services of placement for the young unemployed, leisures, education? Its social action appears with regard to the refugees, of the victims of the bombardments and young prisoners.
Alarming of the unemployment of the young people, it creates association "Houses New" which sets up centers of vocational training, thus organizing a primary technical education.
Each year, the J.O.C. implements large educational campaigns which mobilize more than 50.000 militants and have a significant impact on the public opinion. An example is the countryside for safety with work. In 1941, the J.O.C. included/understood 150.000 members grouped in 22.000 sections and framed by 40.000 militants.
At that time, the J.A.C. gathered 35.000 militants divided in 3.000 sections and 18 federations. It collaborated with the national grouping of the young peasants of the country Corporation and the national Center of the Rural Family for the framing and the formation of rural youth in the point of view moral, social, professional and civic.
This remarkable task of training of rural young people, continued after the Release, made it possible rural France to lay out, during fifty years, at the same time on the ground (in the exploitations and the groupings agricultural and co-operative), in the rooms of Agriculture and the agricultural professional organizations, at all the levels, of the persons in charge and the technicians of value.
As of before the war, the J.E.C. had proclaimed that it was necessary "to remake France" and "to return its heart to him". The objective of the J.E.C. is to bring to the educational circle and studying a moral cleansing, "a physical blooming, a cultural enrichment while diffusing in the schools and the universities the name of Christ, her law, her charity".
The J.E.C. intends to direct the national revolution in a Christian direction and to prevent the Nazis, "these bad shepherds", to seize French youth: it is thus a question of releasing the human person of any slavery. The J.E.C., which was hostile with the S.T.O. (Service of Obligatory Work), gathered 20.000 militants.
The five youth movements Protestant are grouped within the Protesting Council of the Youth (C.P.J.), whose president is Pasteur Marc Boegner, and who was to gather 25.000 members.
The C.P.J. inculcates to its members the respect of the State and its head and the desire to work of all their forces to the release and the rectification of the country. But, to in no case, obedience with a human lord cannot be preferred with obedience with the only Lord of the sky and ground. This concretely implies the formal rejection of all the basically foreign totalitarian ideologies besides to the French tradition.
The majority of these movements, like their president, wish a policy of presence within the new institutions of the French State. But, after the creation of the S.T.O., numbers members were to take the advice of their pastors and to join the maquis.
Among the actions of social mutual aid led by the movements of the C.P.J., it is advisable to announce significant help to the moved people realized by the "Committee Intermouvement", the CIMADE.
It is not, to be strictly accurate, a youth movement, but an organization intervening in direction of the young people in the fields cultural and artistic.
The young people on whom account the Marshal to remake France should not only have "a healthy spirit in a healthy body", but also to be driven at ease in the artistic field. It is good also of being able to initiate them with the techniques of popular art developped at the point by the men of formerly and having given rise to a culture who made the richness of the areas.
Association "Young France" was born, November 20, 1940, on the initiative of young a 22 year old polytechnician, Pierre Schaeffer, organizer of Radio-France. The goal of this association, whose Emmanuel Mounier has the a little appearance of a spiritual father, is "to throw a bridge between the artistic elements and the popular taste". It gathered artists and writers who were to have a name after the war, in particular with Jean Vilar, Fernand Ledoux, Raymond Rouleau, Pierre Fresnay and Pierre Renoir, in his section "theatre".
It proposed to equip each area with an arts centre, organizing theatre and musical tours, creating revolving libraries, museums travelling and multiplying exposures and conferences. It ensured the part "Spectacle" of the large gatherings of young people.
Lastly, it gave a technical training to the young artists directed towards popular art, with the leaders of plays, monitors and organizers.
Association was unfortunately dissolved in March 1942.
The Secretariat-general with Youth brought also its assistance to "Musical Youths of France" and in the rural musical centers created by the violoncellist Jacques Serre in certain communes of the South-east of France.
INNS OF YOUTH AND HOUSES OF YOUTH
Before the war, the Secretary of State Léo Lagrange had wished that the "Inns of youth" bring closer the young workmen the young intellectuals and the young peasants.
Boys and girls from 18 to 30 years, townsmen for the majority, students, workmen, teachers or employed, find in the inns the means of escaping the atmosphere choking from the cities. Also, advised by the founder - in 1930- of the French line of the inns of Youth, Marc Sangnier, the Secretariat-general with Youth estimated that the inns of youth are in measurement, as well as the youth movements, to take part in the creation of a virile and merry youth, suited to the various tasks of tomorrow.
115 new inns are created between 1940 and 1942, but the difficulties of circulation block their frequentation and the movement was to be dissolves on August 15, 1943.
In addition, Louis the Garonne, director of the training of young people to the Secretariat-general with Youth, imagined to square the territory of "houses of youth" comprising of the means of distraction and education; it was a question of developing in the young people the taste of the artisanal and agricultural activities and with an initiation with the dramatic art and the choir singing, for ressusciter of the local traditions, by inculcating the direction of the national virtues.
One counted 41 houses of youth in 1941 and 189 in September 1943. These "houses", after the Release, gave rise to the "Youth club and arts centres" installation in many agglomerations.
In Randan (Puy-de-Dome), as of August 4, 1940, the Companions of France were created. The purpose of this association was the gathering of young French eager to take part in the material and moral raising of the country, by offering their contest to the services of assistance to the refugees and the prisoners or by taking any initiative to associate the young people the service of this country.
To this end, association organized the formation in the centers, camps and camps vacations.
Boys from 16 to 20 years framed by demobilized military executives are initially gathered, teachers, leaders of youth folded up in "nonoccupied zone".
As of July 11, 1940, the Pétain marshal had declared: "let us know We it, modern youth needs to live with youth in a fraternity which prepares it with the combat of the life".
It is initially with the framing and the energization of the young refugees disseminated in Southern zone that addresses the Compagnons movement; in less than one quarter are grouped within the framework of "Companions of building sites" more than 16.000 refugees and are opened 230 building sites.
The life of building site is hard: alarm clock at 6. 3 0, extinction of fires at 22. 00; between the two: six working hours, hello to the Colors hand and evening, hebertism and baths of brain the morning and with taken care consistent under discussion on a watchword, in talks and exposed on subjects of general interest.
The companies are autonomous and deal with entirely young people of more than 18 years that they make work on building sites opened by them. The young people are lodged in quarters or under the tent, are nourished, equipped and touch small savings.
The Companions of building sites devote themselves to earthworks, of agriculture and forest right, water conveyance. They build roads, dig channels, create stages for the practice of physical education and the sport. Parallel to work, one endeavours to give to the Companions a vocational preparation.
They also work within the framework of the mutual aid while taking part in the campaigns of the National Help and while contributing, for example, with the reinstalment of the Lorraine refugees.
The companies of Building sites being called to disappear when the unemployment of the young people is reabsorbed, the movement develops the "Cities Companions".
Under the impulse of the Marshal, importance with the social life and the traditions of the soil was given again. Also the "Cities Companions" gathered, in their places of life, of the workmen, the peasants, junior managers, of the students, pertaining at the same natural community: district of city, village, professional company, university center.
To the Companions is given a civic, moral, physical formation with the practice of the hebertism and the sports. Their heads make them become aware of the importance to prepare to exert a true trade, to found a family, to make themselves ready to take part in the life of the city: many of these Companions will become later mayors or at least city council men.
For some a vocational guidance is organized, an initiation with a trade or a preformation.
The creator of the movement, a young tax inspector, Henry Dhavernos, having had to move away at the beginning of 1941, the Marshal named with the head of the movement an officer, shining combatant in Morocco and lasting the countryside of 1940, which had known to restore the confidence of the students of Paris after their manifestation of November 11, Guillaume de Tournemire, by declaring with the Companions "that they were always with the avant-garde of the national Revolution".
Under its impulse, the movement extended in all the free zone. With its heads of provinces, its heads of country, its heads of bailliages, the movement has a decentralizing design, but above all, it thinks, like Saint-Exupéry at the same time, as what one needs initially is to make BE the young people so that at the come time, they are ready to act where it is necessary and as it is necessary for the release of the country.
Within the movement the action of the heroes and the saints of France is exaltée. The head of Tournemire had proclaimed: "? France is for each French this trade to be liked, this neighbor to be included/understood and help, this district or this village to make reappear Our heart is the national Revolution. It has a head, the Marshal, and an outline of charter, its messages with the French? Nothing harder on employers' selfishness and its social consequences was never known as in France but what the Marshal with Saint-Etienne and Commentry declared - nothing also Net, of also clearly, on the proletarian condition ". A theorist of the movement, Maignial, written: "the rehabilitation of the proletariat in the nation must be the first article of the program and the first realization of the Revolution. This one requires new men - to make a revolution one needs militants, but also thinkers, poets, soldiers ".
Also, in the management training, while being pressed on the studies of "Economy and Humanism" created by the father Joseph Lebret in order to propose an economy with the service of the man and on works of philosophers and economists, such as Emmanuel Mounier, Gustave Thibon, François Perroux, Yves Urvoy, and it is necessary to underline the preoccupation with a cultural activityc(ap) which the movement had (with the creation of the "Famous Theatre" and the "Companions of the Song").
In addition, August 1942, took place the first national camp of the Partners of France - under the direction of Retel Marie-France, they aimed at a social action and its additives: contribute to the mothers, keeps children, support of the old people.
While making function in clandestinity a network of information "Druides" with the profit of the Intelligence Service, the head of Tournemire controlled the action of the Movement Companions for the benefit of the young people "to morally prepare them physically and with being better citizens". As it was to declare it "being with the avant-garde, we were particularly exposed". Indeed, having seized the importance for the rectification of France of the "combat Companions", the Germans required the dissolution of the movement on January 21, 1944.
It is in spring 1942 that the "National Teams were instituted". This organization aimed to the framing of young people not framed up to that point, by voluntariate and the voluntary help. They had from 15 to 20 years in theory (provided education for, student, apprentices, workmen, employees, peasants) and of the two sexes.
The essential task of the national team-member and his heads was "the action civic and social", which wanted to say the assistance to the populations in the need for receiving some, private mainly of the head of family or elder, prisoner of war, necessary of the S.T.O., or off-set in Germany.
From where rural civic service (organized since 1942) during the harvests and the grape harvest - from where the management estival camps vacations; from where the contest with the working gardens (instituted by the Third Republic). Finally of great collections in the cities, even villages, with the profit of the National Help, the Red Cross, the prisoners of war and their families.
In parallel the female teams, competing of activities, devoted themselves more particularly to the social and medical assistance, the mothers, the old men, the children, the disabled person in all the most useful forms and most urgent.
But, the great task of civic and social action, it was the participation in the civil defence, which will be evoked at greater length hereafter.
The task of the National Teams, with their foundation, was hard to undertake. In occupied zone, the urgency of their organization and their action was made wish more than in free zone. The occupant had prohibited there (put aside under the aegis of rare political parties independent of the government) all the youth movements, and among them, scouting. Also the not framed young people were in occupied zone and, by far, majority.
The great question for the provincial executives of the National Teams was to seek young people, voluntary and voluntary, and to organize reception facilities centered on good citizenship and the social action.
But of the young people having passion to be useful could involve comrades with them with the college, or the college, faculty, the workshop, the office, the training college, the countryside.
The authorities, social and religious persons in charge, and especially representatives with all the degrees of National Education (and private establishments) brought their invaluable contest. Thus the inspectors of district of primary education teaching in particular brought their co-operation to these civic and social actions. Those were held after the hours working intellectual or manual in voluntariate.
In their circles of studies, the National Teams did not teach, in conformity with the directives of the Marshal, that traditional values of our country:
- patriotism,
- the respect of the family and work,
- the direction and love of the effort,
- taste of the mutual aid and generosity,
- joy of the team work and accepted discipline.
Let us come now at the years 1943-1944, terrible years for the French civil populations (of which much had already known the tragedy of the exodus of the summer 1940) and who were in Paris and in its north-western suburbs and is, on the littoral of the English Channel, the North Sea and the Atlantic in the large cities (but also in small boroughs) subjected to frequent and very fatal air raids by the allied forces.The victims were very often, as a majority, of the women of all ages and the children, much of children killed in their schools, much of old men and disabled person killed in the old people's homes and the hospitals. One quantifies generally with 60.000 dead approximately a number of those which was thus killed, including 30.000 in a few days in Normandy, at the time of the unloading of June 6, 1944 and, of course, there was a greater number of casualties.
Each one of these bombardments caused in the National Teams a true mobilization. The young volunteers flowed to the places of appointments envisaged, from where organized, grouped in teams, provided with a task to carry out, they left courageously, often between two waves of bombardments, without awaiting the end of the preceding one sometimes, in the flooded cellars when they could reach them, transported the victims in the ambulances, while deaths were forwarded to the mortuary. There, the team-members and team-members buried deaths, tried to identify those which were too much mutilated and received the families. Excavating the debris, they did not fear the dangers of the time bombs which exploded to still kill! They and they had 16, 17, 18 years!
In parallel, other team-members and team-members helped the organizations of help to the disaster victims by carrying out research of the parents or the children to gather them, the removal of what remained to be saved to preserve it plundering, the distribution of food and control in the impromptu lodging houses.
The team-members, upright and sometimes 24 hours a day, served, after having often cooked them, meal and collations with the exténués disaster victims and rescuers (like them).
The National Teams had also the concern of the "interurban" mutual aid. The S.I.P.E.G. (Interdepartmental Service of Protection against the events of war), governmental organization of fast and effective intervention, put much at contribution the National Teams whose experiment had shown the effectiveness to him.
How many team-members and team-members they found death with the field of honor? No history still wrote it.
